Finisar Surveyor manual About Ndis Mode, Captured Packets, Capture Rate / Transmit Speed, Counters

Implementation Profile A

About NDIS Mode

About NDIS Mode

Surveyor in NDIS mode uses an NDIS driver and interfaces to a variety of network adapters. All basic capture, transmit, and monitor functions are the same in NDIS mode. However, it is not recommended that an NDIS module be used to transmit packets; the transmit rate is likely to fall below the specified transmission rate and transmission of error packets is not supported.

The unique capabilities in the software interface due to using an NDIS driver are described below:

Captured Packets

Since the NDIS interface filters out frames with errors, only “good” Ethernet frames are captured. In addition, Surveyor in NDIS mode captures both frames received by the Ethernet adapter as well as frames transmitted by the Ethernet adapter.

Capture Rate / Transmit Speed

Capture/transmit rates depend on the network adapter and the CPU. Typically, the rate will fall below the full line-rate of the network.

Counters

The error counters supported through the NDIS interface are those counters sup- ported by the network adapter. Some vendors do not support any error counters. Only supported error counters are incremented and shown within data views.

Rx Counter Display

Counters not supported by the NDIS module will display with an “N/A” next to the counter.

Transmit Specification

Transmission of error packets is not supported.

The minimum and maximum values for the Packet Size field are 64 and 1518 bytes. The radio button for setting the packet gap in microseconds is grayed. Packet gaps in microseconds are not supported.

Entering a zero in the Packet Gap field forces the shortest gap possible.

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