Many of you are familiar with the packet capture tools Ethereal, Netscout’s Snifffer or Wireshark. All of these are very useful for debugging network-related problems. The problem is that you have to run one of these tools on a computer with special drivers to enable the capture, and sharing the reports isn’t always easy, especially on mobile devices. What if you could put the captures up in the cloud? Enter the idea behind CloudShark from QA Cafe.
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QA has deep expertise in developing test software that is used by some of the largest ISPs around the world, and they have used this experience with CloudShark. (Great name, BTW.) So now network techs and product testers can run captures using a virtual (or real) PCA-1000 appliance on their network, upload it to a private cloud, and then share the results with management. All the reports are viewed in an ordinary Web browser.
The upload process is very flexible: you can provide a URL, email the file, or upload it manually. The CloudShark analysis site has been around for about a year, but the appliance part of the equation is brand new. This is a private cloud solution, so your captures – which often contain very sensitive information such as login credentials and email traffic – aren’t shared with anyone else. Only authorized users are allowed access to the capture files.
The appliance costs $10,000 for a virtual edition or $12,000 for a real piece of hardware. That seems pricey, but not when you think about the time saved with your network engineers, and especially if you do a lot of packet capture analyses. The appliance comes with 90 days of technical support and eventually you will be able to purchase it online. You can try out their analysis service by uploading a test Wireshark file here for no charge.
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