Real-Time TCP/IP Analysis with Common Hardware

Traffic measurement represents an indispensable and valuable tool for the analysis of nowadays telecommunication networks. Moreover, it is desirable for traffic measurement and analysis to be both continuous and persistent, since only these joint requirements allow to track important changes on the traffic pattern. On the other hand, transmission links bandwidth keep improving, at a seemingly inexorable rate: therefore, the analysis of the traffic is becoming more complex than ever. This paper focuses on the description and the benchmarking of a network traffic analyzer, called Tstat, able to process real-time traffic further providing i) several advanced measurement indexes of transport layer protocols and ii) ever-lasting monitoring capabilities. Particularly, our aim is to assess what kind of links, and under which load, can be continuously and persistently monitored without compromising the complexity of the traffic analysis that has to be performed.