The ability to confirm the accurate time when frames have been captured is an important feature needed in many applications. To achieve this, Napatech (News - Alert) provides Intelligent Network Adapters that can provide a high-precision time stamp for every frame captured/transmitted.
Recently, the company stated that it was time to rethink the requirements for precision time stamping and time synchronization, thanks to the unprecedented growth in 10 GbE port installations and also the development of 40 and 100 GbE.
An Ethernet frame can be sent every 67 nanoseconds at 10 Gbps. This time comes down to 17 nanoseconds at 40 Gbps and it further reduces to only 6.7 nanoseconds at 100 Gbps. This simply means that users now have less time to correctly time stamp. But if you want to decide the sequence in which frames are received, an accurate time stamp is imperative. The analysis has the risk of being compromised without this basic information, the company stated.
“The issue is simple", stated Henrik Brill Jensen (News - Alert), CEO, Napatech. "As data is transmitted at faster speeds, there is less time to react and more data to handle per second. It's a double-whammy that network monitoring and analysis applications cannot handle using standard network interface cards. These applications rely on intelligent adapters to take care of packet capture and time-stamping at high speeds. But, to be useful, these network adapters must ensure that each and every Ethernet frame is uniquely time-stamped.”
In 2011, the company introduced a new software suite that increases network appliance development speed, and also makes it less complicated. The Napatech Software Suite also consists of new important functions that considerably improve performance of network appliances. With full line-rate throughput and zero packet loss, Napatech network adapters provide real-time packet capture and transmission.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
