NIKSUN's full packet capture records every packet losslessly at 100G and clusters to multi-Tbps — the industry-leading foundation for security, performance, and forensics.
Full packet capture (FPC) is the practice of recording every single packet that crosses a network — completely and without sampling — and storing it so it can be searched, analyzed, and replayed. It is the ground truth of everything that happens on a network. Because the packets are the raw data behind every flow, log, alarm, and metric, full packet capture is the foundation that makes security, performance, and compliance analytics trustworthy.
A capable full packet capture solution must do several hard things at once:
Governments, defense, and intelligence agencies, financial institutions, service providers, and large enterprises rely on full packet capture wherever the stakes are highest. Benefits include:
For decades, the hardest problem in network monitoring has been capturing everything at ever-increasing speeds without losing data. Most vendors compromise — they sample traffic, drop packets under load, or capture only headers — because true lossless capture at scale is extraordinarily difficult to engineer. NIKSUN built its entire platform around solving this problem, and the result is why NIKSUN is the chosen provider of Full Packet Capture for the U.S. Department of Defense in the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)'s network protection program.
Full packet capture is easy to claim and hard to deliver. Common failure points include:
Let's look at how NIKSUN delivers full packet capture that actually lives up to the name.
Most tools drop packets under load — losing the evidence that matters.
Solution: NIKSUN captures every packet losslessly at line rate, with zero data loss even under sustained, bursty load. This is the capability trusted to protect the most demanding government and defense networks in the world.
Capturing at 100G and beyond is beyond most architectures.
Solution: NIKSUN records at 100 Gbps on a single platform and clusters to multi-Tbps as a single logical system — often in a fraction of the footprint of competing solutions, sometimes as little as a tenth of the rack space.
Captured data is useless if you can't search it quickly.
Solution: The NIKSUN Knowledge Warehouse indexes packets into searchable metadata in real time and delivers world-leading query response, so analysts pivot from a high-level question to the exact packet in seconds — across petabytes and long retention windows.
Raw packets alone leave analysts doing manual correlation.
Solution: NIKSUN cross-correlates captured packets with flows, logs, events, and device metrics in one unified data lake, so full packet capture immediately powers security, performance, observability, and compliance use cases — not just storage.
NIKSUN captures losslessly at up to 100 Gbps on a single platform and clusters to multi-Tbps as one logical system — with zero packet loss even under bursty, sustained load.
Not with NIKSUN. Our architecture delivers industry-leading capture density, often in a fraction of the footprint of competing solutions — sometimes as little as a tenth of the rack space — which lowers both capital and operating cost.
As long as you need. NIKSUN stores raw packets and metadata for hours, days, months, or years, enabling long-window forensic investigation and compliance retention.
Yes. Because NIKSUN correlates packets with flows, logs, events, and metrics in one data lake, full packet capture simultaneously powers security detection, performance management, observability, and compliance — all from the same complete record.
NIKSUN is the recognized world leader in empowering organizations to Know the Unknown. Since 1997, we have been committed to delivering the most innovative solutions for securing and optimizing the networks of over a thousand customers, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and service providers.
Our industry leading suite of scalable, forensics-based cyber security, and network performance monitoring products provide customers with in-depth and actionable insight into security threats, performance issues, and compliance risks. NIKSUN's patented real-time analysis and recording technology is the industry's most comprehensive solution for securing and maintaining dynamic network infrastructure.
See NIKSUN's lossless 100G-to-Tbps capture run on your most demanding links.