What is Skydive?
Skydive is an open source real-time network topology and protocols analyzer designed to provide comprehensive visibility into network infrastructure. It captures network topology, interface attributes, bridge configurations, and namespace data while maintaining a historical record of all modifications. The tool supports distributed flow capture with L2-L4 classification and various tunneling protocols including GRE, VXLAN, GENEVE, MPLS/GRE, and MPLS/UDP.
The platform offers extensibility through API support for external SDN controllers and container-based infrastructures like OpenStack, OpenContrail, and Docker. As a distributed and scalable solution, Skydive features easy deployment with a single static binary. It captures interface metrics in a time series database and provides traffic capture capabilities for monitoring specific protocols based on topology information, with all metrics accessible via API and through a Grafana plugin.
Features
- Topology capture: Captures network topology, interface, bridge, namespace attributes and keeps history of modifications
- Flow capture: Distributed probe with L2-L4 classifier and tunneling protocol support including GRE, VXLAN, GENEVE
- Extendable: Supports external SDN controllers and container infrastructures like OpenStack, OpenContrail, Docker
- Distributed: Scalable architecture with easy deployment using a single static binary
- Monitoring: Captures interface metrics in time series database with traffic capture for specific protocols
Use Cases
- Network troubleshooting in SDN environments
- Infrastructure monitoring and performance analysis
- SDN/Cloud infrastructure continuous integration validation
- Capacity planning and traffic pattern analysis
- Abnormal traffic detection and performance issue identification
