Reconfigurable hardware applications on NetFPGA for network monitoring in large area sensor networks

A valuable functionality for sensor networks, distributed in large volumes is the capability to characterize and analyze the data traffic at wire speed and monitor the data prior to committing to permanent storage. As a demonstrator we use a reconfigurable hardware router for real-time monitoring of data before their transmission to further processing and storage. The reconfigurable hardware router is based on the NetFPGA platform. In this study we report on the hardware implementation to monitor web-based network applications and compare our results with a software based network analyzer.