Feature Set Comparison

From Green Bay 2 to Link™ Capture Software 11.6

Platform
Napatech SmartNIC
Content Type
Migration Document
Capture Software Version
Link™ Capture Software 11.6

N-ANL11 versus N-ANL3A

This table gives an overview of the differences between feature set N-ANL11 for 4GA SmartNICs in the Link™ Capture Software 11.6 release and feature set N-ANL3A for 3GA SmartNICs in the Green Bay 2 release.

Feature N-ANL3A N-ANL11 Comment
Front Ports
100 Gbit/s CFP4 LR4 on NT100E3-1-PTP Yes Yes -
100 Gbit/s CFP4 SR4 on NT100E3-1-PTP No Yes -
Packet Descriptors
Standard packet descriptor Yes Yes A number of fields are not used in feature set N-ANL11 (see DN-1128).
PCAP packet descriptor Yes Yes PCAP descriptors are not 8-byte aligned in feature set N-ANL11, and the FCS is removed from the frames, which is reflected in the stored length. This means that the PCAP descriptors are now fully PCAP-compliant.
Extended packet descriptor 7 Yes No -
Extended packet descriptor 8 Yes No -
Extended packet descriptor 9 Yes Yes The TX fields and a number of other fields are not supported in feature set N-ANL11 (see Extended Descriptor 9), and the descriptor now has a fixed length (see DN-1128).
Dynamic packet descriptor 1 No Yes -
Dynamic packet descriptor 2 No Yes -
Dynamic packet descriptor 3 No Yes -
Dynamic packet descriptor 4 No Yes -
HAL macros Yes Yes -
RX Time-Stamping
End-of-frame time stamps Yes Yes -
Start-of-frame time stamps Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 start-of-frame time stamp does not apply to NT40E3-4-PTP.
Native time stamp format Yes No -
Native UNIX time stamp format Yes Yes -
Native UNIX ns time stamp format No Yes -
Native NDIS time stamp format Yes No -
PCAP-ns time stamp format Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 the time resolution is 1 ns, while in feature set N-ANL3A the time resolution was 4 ns.
PCAP-μs time stamp format Yes Yes -
Time Synchronization
OS time synchronization Yes Yes -
Synchronization of OS time to SmartNIC time Yes Yes -
NT-TS time synchronization Yes Yes Feature set N-ANL11 only supports the NT-TS signal on the internal time synchronization connectors.
PPS time synchronization Yes Yes -
PPS output Yes Yes -
PPS-triggered clock sampling Yes Yes -
PTP time synchronization Yes Yes There are a number of limitations in feature set N-ANL11 (see below).
IEEE 1588-2008 PTP slave Yes Yes -
IEEE 1588-2008 PTP master Yes No -
PTP Default profile Yes Yes -
PTP Telecom profile Yes Yes -
PTP Power profile Yes No -
SyncE slave frequency synchronization Yes Yes -
SyncE master frequency synchronization Yes No -
Time of day and phase reference failover Yes Yes -
Frequency reference failover Yes Yes -
Multi-Port Packet Merge
Software merge across SmartNICs Yes Yes -
Hardware merge on a single SmartNIC Yes Yes -
QPI bypass in an NT200C01 solution No Yes -
Frame Classification
ISL encapsulation, VLAN tags, MPLS encapsulation Yes Yes There is a slight difference for ISL. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
VN-Tag classification No Yes VN-Tag classification does not apply to NT40E3-4-PTP in feature set N-ANL11.
Layer 2: EtherII, Novell_RAW, SNAP, LLC, others Yes Yes There are slight differences, and the Other class is new in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Layer 3: IPv4, IPv6, IPX, others Yes Yes IPX is not supported in feature set N-ANL11, and there are slight differences for IPv4 and IPv6. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Layer 4: TCP, UDP, ICMP, GRE_v0, SCTP, others Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 GRE_v0 is included in the tunnel type classification instead of layer 4, and there is a slight difference for TCP. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Layer 4 port: GTPv0-U, GTPv1v2-C, GTPv1-U, others Yes No -
Tunnel type: GTPv1v2-C, GTPv1-U_signaling, GTPv1-U_GPDU Yes No -
Tunnel type: GTPv1-C, GTPv2-C, GTPv1-U, GRE_v0, GRE_v1, EtherIP, VXLAN No Yes -
Tunnel type: GTPv0-U, IPinIP, others Yes Yes There is a slight difference for GTPv0-U but IPinIP and TunnelType_Other are the same in feature set N-ANL3A and feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Inner layer 2: VLAN tags, MPLS encapsulation No Yes -
Inner layer 3: IPv4, IPv6, others Yes Yes There are slight differences. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Inner layer 4: TCP, UDP, ICMP, GRE_v0, SCTP, others Yes Yes There are slight differences, and GRE_v0 is not included in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Ethernet checksum verification Yes Yes -
IP, UDP and TCP checksum verification Yes No See also HAL Macros.
IP match classification Yes Yes This functionality has been extended in feature set N-ANL11. The number of match entries has been increased, and address groups and wildcard matches have been included. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Filtering and Coloring
64 general-purpose filters Yes Yes The filter architecture is new in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Physical port number filter Yes Yes -
Pattern compare filter Yes Yes The ByteStr32 data type is not supported in feature set N-ANL11, and data values and data masks are restricted compared to feature set N-ANL3A (see NTPL and Pattern Compare).
Size compare filter Yes Yes This functionality has been extended in feature set N-ANL11 to support comparison of subsets of frames.
Protocol filter Yes Yes More protocols are supported in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Error conditions filter Yes Yes Not all error conditions are supported in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
IP match filter Yes Yes This functionality has been extended in feature set N-ANL11. The number of match entries has been increased, and address groups and wildcard matches have been included. However, the IP match function is not implemented in the same way in feature set N-ANL11 as in feature set N-ANL3A. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Flow match filter based on key test No Yes -
Coloring Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 color information can be added in a key test filter. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Color mask No Yes -
Deduplication and Correlation Key
Deduplication Yes No See also HAL Macros.
Correlation key Yes Yes The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11. See also HAL Macros.
Slicing and Decapsulation
Hard-slicing Yes Yes In Green Bay 2 frames are hard-sliced to 16383 bytes in the PHY/MAC and 10000 bytes during the frame processing, so the NT_NET_GET_PKT_WIRE_LENGTH macro returns a number between 10000 and 16383 for hard-sliced frames. In feature set N-ANL11 frames are hard-sliced to 10000 bytes in the PHY/MAC, so the NT_NET_GET_PKT_WIRE_LENGTH macro always returns 10000 for hard-sliced frames.
Fixed slicing Yes Yes -
Dynamic slicing Yes Yes An end-of-frame dynamic offset has been added in feature set N-ANL11 enabling bytes to be sliced off from the end of the frame by applying a negative offset. This can be used, for instance, for frame checksum removal. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
MPLS decapsulation Yes No -
Hashing
Hash key types Yes Yes -
Dynamic hash key selection Yes Yes There are differences with respect to IPMatch. See DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
GTP tunneling support Yes Yes -
IPinIP tunneling support Yes Yes -
GRE tunneling support Yes Yes -
NVGRE tunneling support No Yes -
Tuple swap controlled by IP match filter Yes Yes The implementation differs. feature set N-ANL11 uses a workaround. See DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Tuple swap controlled by receive port number Yes Yes -
Hash key masks Yes Yes There are slight differences. See DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Hashing with configurable field selection No Yes -
Multi-CPU Distribution
Per-port CPU distribution Yes Yes -
Hash-based CPU distribution Yes Yes -
Filter-based CPU distribution Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 stream information can be added in a key test filter. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Combined hash- and filter-based CPU distribution Yes Yes -
IP Fragment Handling
IP fragment handling Yes Yes Inner fragments are not handled in the same way in feature set N-ANL11 as in feature set N-ANL3A (see IP Fragment Handling).
Local Retransmission
Local retransmission between ports on one SmartNIC Yes Yes The implementation differs; and local retransmission of a frame on multiple ports is not supported in feature set N-ANL11. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Local retransmission with embedded time stamp No Yes -
Line loopback Yes Yes -
Host-Based Transmission
Host-based transmission from a host buffer on a specified port Yes Yes The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Host-based transmission of packets from a single host buffer on different ports depending on the port specification in the packet descriptor of the individual packets Yes Yes The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
TX on time stamp Yes Yes The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
IP, UDP and TCP checksum generation Yes No -
Injection of time stamp Yes No -
Generation of new CRCs for transmitted frames Yes Yes -
Transmission of frames with the CRC stored in the frame without generating a new one Yes No -
Buffer System
Back-to-back storage of frames No Yes In feature set N-ANL11 frames are stored back-to-back in the host buffer with no padding in between per default, while in feature set N-ANL3A frames were always 8-byte aligned and zero-padded.
Maximum number of host buffers 32 128 128 host buffers are only available with dynamic segment size. With static segment size the maximum number of host buffers is 64.
Maximum host buffer size 128 GBytes 1 TByte -
Total host buffer memory 128 GBytes 1 TByte -
Segment sizes supported (in MB) default, 1, 2, 4 default, dynamic, 1, 2, 4 In feature set N-ANL11 dynamic segment size is recommended for packet-based interface, while static segment size (1, 2 or 4 MBytes) is recommended for segment-based interface. Dynamic segment size enables up to 128 host buffers, while static segment size enables up to 64 host buffers.
Note: The default value of the HostBufferSegmentSizeRx parameter is default, which in feature set N-ANL11 corresponds to dynamic, while in feature set N-ANL3A it corresponded to 1 MByte.
Onboard packet buffering Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 the OnBoardMemorySplit parameter has an additional value.
IOMMU support Yes Yes -
Statistics
Frame classifications Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 giant undersize frames are not automatically considered as bad frames, and a frame can be large and still be a baby giant. This makes the counters RMON-compatible. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
RMON1 counters per port Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 jabbers counts all large erroneous frames including hard-sliced frames. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Extended RMON1 counters per port Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 pktsHardSlice is always 0, since all hard-sliced frames are considered to be erroneous. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Checksum counters per port Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 IP the checksum counters are always 0 since IP, UDP and TCP checksum verification is not supported. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
Packet decoding counters per port Yes Yes -
Extended drop counters per port Yes Yes In feature set N-ANL11 pktsDedup and octetsDedup are always 0, since deduplication is not supported, and pktsMacBandwidth is also always 0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in feature set N-ANL11.
IP fragment counters per port Yes Yes -
Statistics per color Yes Yes -
Statistics per stream ID Yes Yes -
Synchronized statistics across SmartNICs Yes Yes -
Performance
PCIe performance for NT100E3-1-PTP 56 Gbit/s 112 Gbit/s -
PCIe performance for NT40E3-4-PTP and NT20E3-2-PTP 56 Gbit/s 56 Gbit/s -
Other features
Properties No Yes See also DN-0810 and DN-0449.
Operating Systems
Linux Yes Yes More versions are supported in Link™ Capture Software 11.6 than in Green Bay 2.
FreeBSD Yes No -
Windows Yes Yes Link™ Capture Software 11.6 only supports Windows Server 2016, 64-bit.