n2disk is a software application that allows to dump traffic to disk at line rate (10 Gbit full duplex) with high-accurate timestamps. This both using networks cards featuring hardware timestamps and also with software timestamps. Most companies focus just on capture to disk, whereas we believe that it is also compulsory to provide solutions for traffic replay by exploiting these high-accurate timestamps that have been saved on pcap files. This activity is quite challenging. Replying traffic with high-precision timestamps it is necessary for instance whenever we want to reproduce exactly the same network conditions as observed during packet capture. Application such as pfsend can replay pcap files but the tool is limited in pcap size (the pcap file cannot exceed the available system memory) and accuracy (i.e. the transmit rate has good precision but it is not 100% accurate).
Together with Fox Television, we have developed a new application named disk2n (in essence the n2disk counterparts) able to reproduce pcap-saved network traffic using commodity hardware (an Intel 10 Gbit NIC using PF_RING DNA) at very high-precision. Demonstrated at various events [1] [2], disk2n has been used to reproduce UHDTV traffic captured by n2disk onto a live network. In this context, traffic replay speed is important but it must also be combined with high-accuracy as ultra-HD television cannot tolerate any jitter otherwise the video will flicker.
After many tests and improvements, we are now announcing the availability of disk2n to everyone who needs to:
- Reproduce large amount (Terabytes) of traffic previously captured in the industrial format pcap format (e.g. using n2disk). The pcap file to reproduce can be larger of the available system memory and it can be portioned onto several smaller pcap files.
- High-accuracy traffic reproduction so that replayed traffic is sent at the same pace of the captured traffic.
- Using commodity hardware and PF_RING DNA.
For more information about this new product, please refer to the disk2n product page.