Forum Discussion
Honored Contributornetwork analyzer
Hey everybody.
as a part of my studies i have to build an HW network analyzer, i will use the altera-DE2. at the begin i should get and receive eth packet (the information that i need is till level 4 of OSI). is anyone know or have any clue/idea how should i begin with it? 10x a lot!9 Replies
Altera_ForumEthernet is not a simple stuff.. why not using an external usb-uart module?
For ethernet you need NIOS, an OS, etc..- Altera_Forum
yeah unfortunately i know it, i'm looking for kind of opinions about it... is the external usb part module easier? can i connect the altera to 2 servers and sniff the packets over?
- Altera_Forum
Yes, USB-UART module are like using RS232.. just a TX and RX lines. In 1-2 days you can write your UART module to let talk FPGA talk to PC.
If you use NIOS you already have Altera RS232 module ready and tested. - Altera_Forum
ok, good to know!
i'm trying to avoid using the NIOS and i will try write some module by myself as you recommend. 10X a lot for the quick advice! - Altera_Forum
PS: Throught Avalon you can use RS232 module also without NIOS
- Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- Ethernet is not a simple stuff.. why not using an external usb-uart module? For ethernet you need NIOS, an OS, etc.. --- Quote End --- You won't need a nios for this project, all the logic can be done in hw. I doubt nios would be fast enough to analyse full speed ethernet. You can just instantiate an Avalon streaming ethernet core and analyse the packets as they arrive.
- Altera_Forum
Yes but a network stack on an OS can handle UDP/TCP with less effort..
- Altera_Forum
The DE2 might not be the best choice for this. Many but not all of them were built with a Marvell PHY chip. Information on that chip is not available except from a Marvell distributor and probably not available at all to individuals. Check to see if your board is using this chip. In general, make sure you can get a complete data sheet on the PHY chip of any board you want to use with Ethernet.
- Altera_Forum
You can learn a lot just by running through an existing example.
Look at http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/nios_ii_udp_offload_example Get it up and running, then examine the UDP receive processing. Replace it with logic to support your analyzer functions. If nothing else, should give you a very good idea how to process the Ethernet frames in this environment.
