Overview

Stateful Flow Management

Platform
Napatech SmartNIC
Content Type
User Guide
Capture Software Version
Link™ Capture Software 12.6

As network speeds increase exponentially, the challenge for every security appliance and application is to keep up with ever-increasing traffic. Flow management and flow awareness can alleviate this problem.

Security applications, including standard and advanced next-generation firewalls, are challenged by the number of packets they need to process, and the significant processing needed per packet.

The solution is to offload packet processing to a SmartNIC, for as many flows as possible.

To offload flows, the SmartNIC needs to perform flow classification for each packet. For known flows, the packet is handled completely in the SmartNIC and all other packets are forwarded to the application for handling.

Flow management does not replace packet capture, but can be used for initial analysis to determine events and their source.