International Business Machines Corporation

Napatech A/s

Thomas D Silliman

William Alexander Bird

Wayne Francis Tackabury

Russell L Couturier

Peter Dahl Ekner

Michael Milde Lilja

Alex Omo Agerholm

Philip Due Soeberg

Embodiments are directed to a method of implementing a packet capture ring. The packet capture ring includes a plurality of appliances, and the plurality of appliances includes a first appliance and a second appliance. The first appliance and the second appliance are both attached to a network tap, and the first appliance works as a master appliance. The master appliance ingests packets from the network tap, encapsulates the packets and forwards encapsulated packets in the packet capture ring. The method includes: detecting, by the second appliance, a failure of the first appliance; working, by the second appliance, as the master appliance; and removing, by the second appliance, the first appliance from a forwarding designation list.

Fault-tolerant architecture for packet capture

Embodiments are directed to a packet capture ring that provides a single network tap for packet capture and a series of processors (or appliances) for handling serialization and search request processing in a confederated and highly scalable manner. One such appliance (a 'primary' appliance) maintains a tap port to the network. Each packet capture appliance has a locally attached repository that stores raw packets and a juxtaposed index that allows for retrieval of those packets. The primary appliance sends a single copy of encapsulated packets in opposite directions around the ring to its descendants. A designation is made across the system as to a 'currently designated' appliance for servicing requests for indexing and storage of captured packets. This current designation shifts from appliance to appliance in the system, as a &#x201c;previously designated&#x201d; appliance has its storage capacity filled.

Packet capture ring: reliable, scalable packet capture for security applications

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Leeds, MA, United States of America

Thomas D Silliman