Research and improvement on packet capture mechanism in linux for high-speed network

With the increasing enlargement of network scale and the rapid development of network techniques, large numbers of the network applications begin to appear. Packet capture plays an important role as one basic technique used in each field of the network applications. In a high-speed network, the heavy traffic of network transmission challenges the packet capture techniques. This paper does an in-depth analysis on the traditional packet capture mechanisms in Linux, and then measures the performance bottleneck in the process of packet capture. The methods for improving the packet capture performance are presented and an optimized packet capture scheme is also designed and implemented. The test demonstrates that the new packet capture mechanism (Libpacket) can greatly improve the packet capture performance of the network application systems in a high-speed network.