100 Gbit/s network monitoring with on-the-fly reconfigurable rules for multi-encapsulated packets

Before the advent of FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), hardware acceleration of networking equipment has been implemented through static architectural elements. The new generations of these highly flexible FPGA architectures can be reconfigured on-the-fly, allow parallell processing of data arriving at high-speed, and even contain hundreds of DSPs (Digital Signal Processors), to further parallelize certain, computationally intensive tasks. This paper demonstrates some of the capabilities of a new, FPGA-based networking platform, C-GEP. This multi-purpose, programmable platform can support various tasks, from being a high-speed switch/router, through pre-processing packets for Deep Packet Inspection, towards being the Forwarding Plane element in the SDN infrastructure. The current demonstration contains two further implementations of 100 Gbit/s-capable applications: a traffic generator - firing off multi-encapsulated packets - and a lossless traffic monitor - that is able to classify and steer the monitored traffic to further post-processors.