[j-nsp] Whitebox 10Gb/s capture challenge

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Mon, 9 Jan 2012, OBrien, Will wrote:

> I'm pondering the idea of trying to build a relatively inexpensive 10Gb capture box.
> The simple solution is a dell R710 with 10Gb nics. I have some, they work, but I'd have to spend $50k to get enough of them.
>
> So, my challenge is keeping the price point is something around $1000-$1500 - basically the 10Gb version of a 1u gigE capture system.
>
> In general, I probably don't need to ever write 10Gb/s to disk, but it would be nice load the dice for success.
> My thoughts are a reasonable performance motherboard with 10Gb PCIe nics or a white box mobo with onboard SFP+ ports.
>
> Anyone gone this route?

I looked into this a year or two ago, and the price point was 
significantly higher - around $5k per box built from the ground up, as 
opposed to starting off with a bare-bones Dell/HP chassis.  The main costs 
at the time were the 10G NICs and a disk subsystem that could sustain 
capturing to disk at something approaching wire-speed, which necessitates 
RAID and a fast enough RAID controller so you can spread the I/O across 
multiple disks.  We ended up not building any boxes - time and priorities 
forced us to shelve the project.

I know Wireshark sells pre-built sniffer appliances as well.  They're 
pricey, but still a lot less so than some of the bigger commercial 
products (Infinistream, etc).

I think Myricom has newer NICs now that are somewhat less expensive.  At 
the time I looked, the NICs were around $1000-$1500 apiece.

jms