CACE Releases TurboCap for Linux

Creative Advanced Communications Engineering Technologies, Inc., a company that offers networking products and engineering and consulting services, reportedly has released a Linux Fedora 10 driver for TurboCap, a gigabit Ethernet solution formerly available for Windows-based platforms only.

 

TurboCap is dual-port, full line-rate gigabit Ethernet packet capture and injection solution with advanced features such as simultaneous full-rate capture and injection, multiport traffic aggregation, and a configurable pass-thru mode. Full-rate gigabit Ethernet packet capture is most needed when a network is exhibiting poor performance, said CACE offials.

 

The $900 solution includes a PCI Express, Dual-Port, gigabit Ethernet Board, the TurboCap optimized driver, and a user-level API. The addition of Linux, according to the company, has made the solution more appealing to a large market segment comfortable with this operating environment.

 

Manjinder Bains, development engineer for an optical packet solutions provider and TurboCap for Linux beta tester, said he ran the sample applications that come with TurboCap with a cable between the two ports of the board on a quad-core system.

 

“The applications handled full rate gigabit traffic and left plenty of CPU power for processing packets and other things,” Bains said. “It’s an incredible feat. It’s reassuring to know that we will be able to use TurboCap for wire speed tests on a PC instead of spending more money on high-priced network performance equipment.”

 

TurboCap Software distribution for Linux Fedora 10 includes a Developer’s Pack for creating applications based on the TurboCap API and sample applications. The TurboCap Windows and Fedora 10 Linux drivers support multiple TurboCap boards.

 

Pass-thru Mode, in which packets received on each port are injected out the other port of the same board, is similar to a hardware tap. When TurboCap is in pass-through mode, incoming traffic on each port is available for capture.

 

Application performance includes simultaneous full-rate Gigabit packet injection on both ports. Packets are transmitted in the order in which they are sent to the driver and with minimal delay. Also, TurboCap exports a Global Aggregation Port (TcAP) consisting of the aggregated traffic from all ports on all boards.