Packet Capture & Traffic Visualization
Start packet capture on a switch/link, choose ports, inspect live packets, correlate observed and inferred relationships in Network Flow, and visualize captured traffic on Mission Planner.
Observe traffic on the modeled network
Packet Capture can be started from the relevant switch or link and limited to the ports required for the test. The live table confirms that traffic is present before deeper analysis.
Network Flow turns that packet evidence into a topology-aware relationship graph. Solid connections are directly observed in the capture; dashed connections are inferred from STRATUM topology so the interface can connect captured endpoints to known switches, interfaces, and workloads without presenting inference as wire evidence.
Captured traffic can also be pushed back onto the Mission Planner canvas so the observed path is drawn in the context of the actual datacenter topology. On a large datacenter with hundreds or thousands of nodes, that changes troubleshooting from hunting through port lists and packet tables into seeing where the traffic actually moved across the modeled infrastructure.
Packet capture becomes topology intelligence: STRATUM can light the observed traffic path directly across the datacenter model, even when the topology is too large to reason about one port at a time.
Procedure
Open Packet Capture
Open packet capture from the selected switch or link so the capture stays scoped to the intended network object.
Packet Capture Port Selector
Choose the switch ports to observe. Limit capture to the interfaces needed for the test when possible.
Packet Capture Port List
Choose the capture point and interfaces, start capture, and use the live packet list to verify traffic is reaching the expected path.
Packet Capture Live Traffic
Start capture and verify packets populate the live table before interpreting the path.
Network Flow
Open Network Flow after capture is running to turn raw packet observations into a topology-aware relationship graph. The header retains the active capture context and packet count while the graph reduces the packet set into the endpoints and STRATUM objects that matter.
Solid connections are observed. They come directly from captured traffic. Dashed connections are inferred from STRATUM topology. Inference adds the modeled context needed to relate IP addresses, MAC addresses, switch interfaces, and workload identities, but it remains visually distinct from packet evidence. That distinction is important: STRATUM can explain the likely path without pretending an inferred segment was observed on the wire.
Use this view when packets are clearly present but the operational question is bigger than a single frame: which endpoints participated, which systems they map to, and how those relationships fit into the modeled Layer-2 path. On dense datacenters, Network Flow can compress hundreds of packet rows into a graph that exposes the network relationships worth investigating next.
Packet Capture Visualize On Canvas
Send the capture visualization back to Mission Planner to map observed traffic onto the topology.
Canvas Traffic Flow Visualization
Use the animated canvas flow to see which links and systems are carrying the captured traffic.
The outcome you should see
Packets appear in the capture view, Network Flow separates directly observed relationships from topology-inferred context, and Mission Planner can visualize the resulting traffic path on the datacenter canvas.