View Larger   Capture Solera Networks DS appliances can record all of the data in motion on your network–all the time–without losing a single network packet of data. It doesn't matter what type of data you want to capture, because DS appliances can capture packets from the Data Link layer on up (layers 2-7).

Connect a DS appliance to your network via a network tap or switched port analyzer (SPAN), and the DS appliance captures a copy of all network traffic flowing through the tap or port analyzer and saves it to storage. Figure 1 illustrates a sample deployment. The captured traffic is available for playback and analysis within 1 millisecond, giving you near real-time viewing and analysis capability, without the risks of performing the analysis on a live network.

The DS appliance sits passively on the network and does not require a protocol stack (e.g. TCP/IP) on the data capture port. This renders the DS appliance effectively invisible to, and not addressable from, the targeted (captured) network segment. Appliance management occurs through a separate port that is not available on the targeted network segment.

You have complete control over the type of traffic that the DS appliance captures. You can filter network traffic, either during capture or when replaying captured traffic after the fact.

When the data capture fills all available slots, the DS appliance begins recycling slots, the system overwrites the oldest data collected — leaving the amount of historical data kept up to the user.