Traditionally, intelligent stacking technology for distributed traffic capture devices brings scalability, speed and fault tolerance to centralized network monitoring. Network traffic captured in distributed way requires a scalable centralized layer between network infrastructure and analytical equipment. This architecture creates a single logical traffic capture layer that automatically discovers and routes traffic to the designated monitoring tool via the highest-speed link and the lowest number of hops, changing the path as needed in event of link failure or reconfiguration.
One drawback of existing intelligent stacking technology is that various network capture devices included in the single logical traffic capture layer typically not only have different port speeds but also limited filtering resources. However, optimum path selection techniques employed by existing centralized network capture systems take into account only variable link speeds.