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The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman April 2003

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Page 1: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman April 2003

Page 2: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

Page 1

INTRODUCTION The CATC Trace™ is an intuitive and powerful expert protocol analysis software system, used to ease the design, test and debug of various products employing advanced communication protocols. Today’s protocols are becoming more and more complex (the Bluetooth specifications document has more than 1,400 pages), requiring detailed and specialized expertise. The CATC Trace is used as an expert protocol design assistant, embedding deep understanding of the protocol hierarchy and intricacies and presenting this knowledge to the user in a very intuitive and easy to use fashion. The CATC Trace is offered as an integral part of CATC’s extensive line of protocol analysis products, supporting the Bluetooth, Fibre Channel, IEEE 1394, InfiniBand, PCI Express, Serial ATA and USB standards. CATC’s analyzers accurately monitor, capture, filter and analyze high-speed communications traffic, allowing our customers to quickly discover and correct persistent and intermittent errors and flaws in their product design.

CATC’s analyzers include a hardware box with specific non-intrusive bus probing interface and a proprietary protocol processor technology called BusEngine™. The BusEngine monitors the bus traffic in real-time, looking for general error conditions and protocol anomalies as well as for specific data patterns specified by the user. The CATC Trace software allows the user to control the analyzer and to set specific real-time triggering and filtering conditions. Once these conditions are met, the analyzer hardware records the protocol traffic into its high-speed memory and then uploads the recorded data over a USB connection to a Windows-based PC running the CATC Trace software. It is the software that controls and manages the majority of the protocol analysis tasks.

The CATC Trace is composed of a trace database for storing and retrieving recorded data, a navigation tool for easily finding specific protocol events, a decode engine for decoding higher-level as well as custom protocols, and statistical tools for analyzing and displaying bus utilization, errors and other data.

This White Paper is an architectural overview of the CATC Trace software and describes the unique features of the CATC Trace expert software. This paper explains how the CATC Trace interacts with the analyzer hardware and how it analyzes and presents the captured traffic to help the user shorten the design, debug and verification processes of product development.

Page 3: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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THE TRACE DATABASE

With more than 10 years of experience in the development of protocol analyzers, CATC realized early on that the only way to effectively process tens of millions of recorded packets within a few seconds would be to save the vast amount of information in a special data structure (database). The resulting data structure correlates the recorded information starting from the bit level (zero and ones) through the packet level, the transaction level, and so forth, up to the highest level of the specific protocol.

Leveraging the powerful CPUs of today’s computers, the CATC Trace software builds the Trace database at the time of uploading the recorded data from the analyzer hardware to the computer. This “on the fly” processing allows the CATC Trace software engine to provide the user with any information he needs almost instantaneously. Once the recorded file is saved, the CATC Trace is displayed on the computer screen, ready to support the user.

Any user query such as: searching for a specific event, decoding specific transfers, or performance calculations will be answered instantaneously. The software uses the database’s intelligent pointers to collect the required information for display, or for further calculation (such as bus usage).

Page 4: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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THE TRACE INTERFACE

CATC is well known for its unique way of visually displaying the communication protocol information. The CATC Trace presents the recorded data making extensive use of color and graphics. Packets are shown on separate rows, with their individual fields both labeled and color-coded. Packets are also numbered (sequentially, as recorded), time stamped (with an appropriate high-speed resolution), and highlighted to show other protocol specific events. The display is highly customizable, on an individual recording basis; the user is able to control the color scheme, the suppression of cycle start and other packets or fields that may be uninteresting in a given context, and the formatting of field contents.

This is a screen shows a Bluetooth trace showing Packets level.

The CATC Trace expert software embeds detailed knowledge of the protocol hierarchy as well as the meaning of the information coded in the various packet fields, as defined in the protocol specifications. The Trace screen display, through a combination of on screen tool-tips, allows us humans to read protocol sessions like reading an illustrated book.

This screen shows the robustness of the tool-tips.

Page 5: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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TRACE NAVIGATOR

But the CATC Trace is much more than an intuitive, colorful display. The software has been optimized for fast and easy navigation through a captured traffic session. Users can easily drill down on areas of interest or collapse and hide fields that are not relevant. This flexibility greatly aids the user when trying to isolate a specific error or interoperability issue.

The user can easily navigate thru a recorded session to find a specific area of interest. When the session file is opened, the display screen shows the packets surrounding the trigger event. The user can then scroll up or down from that point. Typically, the user will want to look at a summary report [see below - provide link] and jump from there immediately to a relevant point in the recording by clicking on a specific entry in the report. You can also use the ‘Find’ menu function to look for specific packets or events. When you find a specific packet of interest you can mark it for future reference and add your own notes to this marker. You’ll be able to easily get back to any of the markers that you set up. You could also send this recorded file to other engineers who would be able to open the file, using an identical CATC Trace viewer (available for download on CATC’s website), and read your annotated markers, highlighting any area of interest.

For developers that want to view the recorded data from much higher level, the CATC Trace provides “Trace Navigator”. This tool allows the user to look at the complete recorded file, or to focus on a specific area of interest. Trace Navigator presents the entire recording in a graphical fashion, as a set of colorful bars depicting the various events that were captured. Running the mouse over the colored lines gives the user a detailed description of what is in that particular location of the trace.

This is a screen shows a USB trace with open navigator.

Page 6: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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DECODING ENGINE

The CATC Trace has a unique decoding engine that is common to all CATC analyzers. When decoded, the recorded data is restructured according to the logical order and not by the time order as it has been recorded. The protocol is shown in an easy-to-grasp hierarchical fashion, collapsing the low-level protocol elements into high-level protocol units. This allows the user to easily understand the logic of the traffic and make sure that the participating devices behave correctly at any protocol level not just the bus packet level.

It is a matter of only one click to get from the highest protocol view to the finest details of every recorded packet. With an additional mouse click, the user can view every single bit of the recorded packet. For simplicity, the bit level display uses the same colors scheme that is used in the packet level display.

This screen illustrates an InfiniBand Trace that shows 3 levels of the protocol hierarchy, with a bit level display (10b, 8b coding) on top.

When the user searches for different bus events, such as source/destination IDs, packet types, specific payload lengths and so on, the CATC Trace software offers for selection only those values that are actually present in the trace.

This screen shows a Find dialog box in which the user is searching packets with specific data length. The dialog box shows only data lengths that exist in the recorded file.

Page 7: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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EXTERNAL PROTOCOL DECODES

A key feature of the CATC Trace is its support for external script-based protocol decoders. Many protocols were designed to be a transport mechanism for other protocols. USB may carry Bluetooth HCI commands, Fibre Channel may carry SCSI or IP commands, and so on. Many of these protocols are vendor specific or partially customized.

The CATC Trace provides an external script-based protocol decoder software interface that allows the user to modify, extend or add decoders for specific protocols. The decoders control several aspects of the CATC Trace such as: trace presentation, protocol decoding (i.e. grouping units of lower levels into units of higher levels), performance calculation, high-level triggering and automated trace verification. Instead of viewing raw data bits, the user enjoys the decoding power of the CATC Trace.

This screen is an example of SCSI commands that were transferred over a Fibre Channel link.

Page 8: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

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TRAFFIC SUMMARY

An integral part of the CATC Trace is the hierarchical Traffic Summary. The traffic summary tool provides a statistical view of the recorded data, and the ultimate way to jump to any point of interest at the recorded trace. The user can instantly jump to a packet of a certain type, to a transaction with a specific payload size, or to an exchange with maximum response time. The traffic summary tables can be printed out, exported to HTML, or e-mailed.

This is a screen shows a traffic summary table of a USB handshake.

BUS UTILIZATION

Another feature that makes the CATC Trace such a powerful and versatile tool is the Bus Utilization. This is a collection of graphs representing different aspects of the recorded trace in relations with time. The tool can display several plots simultaneously, on the same or different graph areas. The graphs are highly customizable. The user defines what parts of the trace to include in the visual presentation. The Bus Utilization graph can be used as an additional navigation tool. By double clicking on any point of the graph, the trace display will automatically scroll to bring the point of interest to the top of the trace screen.

Fibre Channel bus utilization shows SCSI IO transactions response time and latency time

Page 9: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

The CATC Trace

Page 8

CONCLUSION

The CATC Trace is an intuitive and powerful expert protocol analysis software system, used to ease the design, test and debug of various products employing advanced communication protocols. The CATC Trace is used as an expert protocol design assistant, embedding deep understanding of the protocol hierarchy and intricacies, allowing our customers to quickly discover and correct persistent and intermittent errors and flaws in their product design.

To learn more about the CATC Trace and to download a free copy of the CATC Trace viewer, go to http://www.catc.com/support/software/index.html.

Page 10: The CATC Trace: Expert Protocol Analysis Softwarecdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/wpcatctrace_0403.pdfExpert Protocol Analysis Software By Peretz Tzarnotzky and Valera Fooksman

Computer Access Technology Corporation 2403 Walsh Avenue

Santa Clara, CA 95051 408-727-6600 www.catc.com