Network recorder and player: FPGA-based network traffic capture and replay

Abstract

An appropriate tool to generate real network traffic plays an important role in testing network system. Traditionally, such a tool relies on software solutions that copies data back and forth between different part of memory to capture or replay network traffic. In this paper, we propose an FPGA-centric approach using parallel logic, which can ensure high accuracy of time and high throughput. We first design an FPGA add-on board dealing with the multifarious work like adding content or calculate statistical value. The system is implemented on an own designed off-the-shelf FPGA network add-on card to demonstrate the viability of our assumption. Experiments demonstrate reasonable performance improvement (higher throughput and replay time precision) when compared with software based solutions.