This invention relates to network test and measurement, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for detecting duplicate packets in network traffic.
In operation and maintenance of networks, determination of where issues or problem points arise can be complex. A network engineer or technician looking to resolve problems would be interested in having accurate network protocol statistics. Network analyzers that employ multiple ports may be connected to a network such that packets on a network may be seen at two or more ports of the analyzer. Misinterpreting these duplicate packets in protocol analysis can lead to erroneous statistics and false conclusions.
While it might be considered to store copies of each packet seen on a network and compare the contents thereof to determine duplicates, this would require large amounts of memory to store the packets and many processing cycles to perform the comparison. The requirements become greater as network speeds increase, making such method undesirable.
A software-calculated hash over the contents of each packet could reduce the memory requirements to perform such comparison, but would but do little to reduce the processing cycles required.