CAGE-100: Real-Time Multi-Port Packet Capture System for 100 Gigabit Ethernet Traffic

Future large scale sciences are anticipated to use massive amount of data in their experiments. DOEs ESnet (Energy Science Network) is developing a 100 Gbps backbone based on this state-of-the-art 100 Gigabit Ethernet standard. ESnet will serve thousands of DOE and non-DOE scientists with its high bandwidth backbone, and connect several national laboratories. Current Ethernet test and debug solutions, such as network traffic capturer/analyzer tools, support up to 10 Gbps speed, and the very few capable of handling 100 Gbps are extremely costly. Such tools are essential in the development of high speed devices and routers, and ultimately the success of 100 Gigabit Ethernet. An innovative traffic capture tool for 100 Gigabit Ethernet (CAGE-100) is proposed. The objective is to use low cost FPGA based hardware in order to integrate capturing engines in a single Integrated Circuit (IC), and decrease the overall development cost. The FPGA based approach makes our final product reliable, low cost, flexible (in-field upgradable) and reconfigurable to support various test/debug scenarios. Large memory will be available on CAGE-100 to make sure all packets of interest are stored on board. User will be able to browse, analyze, and search the captured packets when they are downloaded through the host interface using a comprehensive and user friendly GUI on a PC. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The capability that CAGE-100 provides for the testing of devices/networks provides a key advantage to product developers. In the initial development of a product, a multi-layer traffic capture provides a controlled means for monitoring traffic and ensuring that basic communication routines are functioning, allowing the developer to step sequentially through communication protocols and observe the response of the device under test as the complexity of the communication protocols are increased