Link™ Capture Software 12.0 versus Green Bay 2
This table gives an overview of the differences in features between the Link™ Capture Software 12.0 release for 4GA SmartNICs and the Green Bay 2 release for 3GA SmartNICs.
Feature | Green Bay 2 | Link™ Capture Software 12.0 | 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 (see DN-1128). |
PCAP packet descriptor | Yes | Yes | PCAP descriptors are not 8-byte aligned in Link™ Capture Software 12.0, 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 (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 | - |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 the time resolution is 1 ns, while in Green Bay 2 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 | Link™ Capture Software 12.0 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 (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 | Yes | - |
PTP Enterprise profile | No | Yes | - |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
VN-Tag classification | No | Yes | - |
Layer 2: EtherII, Novell_RAW, SNAP, LLC, others | Yes | Yes | There are slight differences, and the Other class is new in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Layer 3: IPv4, IPv6, IPX, others | Yes | Yes | IPX is not supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0, and there are slight differences for IPv4 and IPv6. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Layer 4: TCP, UDP, ICMP, GRE_v0, SCTP, others | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Green Bay 2 and Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Inner layer 4: TCP, UDP, ICMP, GRE_v0, SCTP, others | Yes | Yes | There are slight differences, and GRE_v0 is not included in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Filtering and Coloring | |||
64 general-purpose filters | Yes | Yes | The filter architecture is new in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Physical port number filter | Yes | Yes | - |
Pattern compare filter | Yes | Yes | The ByteStr32 data type is not supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0, and data values and data masks are restricted compared to Green Bay 2 (see NTPL and Pattern Compare). |
Size compare filter | Yes | Yes | This functionality has been extended in Link™ Capture Software 12.0 to support comparison of subsets of frames. |
Protocol filter | Yes | Yes | More protocols are supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Error conditions filter | Yes | Yes | Not all error conditions are supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
IP match filter | Yes | Yes | This functionality has been extended in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 as in Green Bay 2. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Flow match filter based on key test | No | Yes | - |
Coloring | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 color information can be added in a key test filter. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Color mask | No | Yes | - |
Deduplication and Correlation Key | |||
Correlation key | Yes | Yes | The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Deduplication | Yes | Yes | The implementation has been changed and much improved to be able to handle traffic up to 2 x 100 Gbit/s at full wire speed and with much larger packet windows. It is now possible to perform deduplication on specific types of traffic making the feature much more usable and effective. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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. Link™ Capture Software 12.0 uses a workaround. See DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 stream information can be added in a key test filter. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 as in Green Bay 2 (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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
TX on time stamp | Yes | Yes | The implementation differs. See DN-1128 and DN-0449 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0 frames are stored back-to-back in the host buffer with no padding in between per default, while in Green Bay 2 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 Link™ Capture
Software 12.0
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 Link™ Capture
Software 12.0 corresponds
to dynamic, while in Green Bay 2 it corresponded to
1 MByte.
|
Onboard packet buffering | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 the OnBoardMemorySplit parameter has an additional value. |
IOMMU support | Yes | Yes | - |
Statistics | |||
Frame classifications | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 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 Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
RMON1 counters per port | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 jabbers counts all large erroneous frames including hard-sliced frames. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Extended RMON1 counters per port | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 pktsHardSlice is always 0, since all hard-sliced frames are considered to be erroneous. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Checksum counters per port | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 IP the checksum counters are always 0 since IP, UDP and TCP checksum verification is not supported. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
Packet decoding counters per port | Yes | Yes | - |
Extended drop counters per port | Yes | Yes | In Link™ Capture Software 12.0 pktsFilterDrop and octetsFilterDrop have been added, and pktsMacBandwidth is also always 0. See DN-1128 for the implementation in Link™ Capture Software 12.0. |
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 | Different versions are supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0 compared to Green Bay 2. |
FreeBSD | Yes | No | - |
Windows | Yes | Yes | Different versions are supported in Link™ Capture Software 12.0 compared to Green Bay 2, and Link™ Capture Software 12.0 only supports 64-bit. |