Network Monitoring Interface Card
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A network monitoring interface card or NMIC is similar to a network card (NIC). However, unlike a standard network card, a NMIC is designed to passively (and silently) listen on a network. At a functional level, a NMIC may differ from a NIC, in that the NMIC may not have a MAC Address, may lack the ability to transmit and may not announce its presence on a network. Advanced Network Monitoring Interface Cards have features that include an ability to offload CPU intensive processing from a system's CPU, accurate time measurement, traffic filtering, and an ability to perform other application specific processing.
NMICs are typically used in intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS), lawful interception, flow analysis, network monitoring, and protocol analyzer systems.
[edit] Notable Manufacturers
[edit] See also
- TCP Segmentation offloading
- TCP Offload Engine (TOE)
- Unified Threat Management (UTM)
- Intrusion-detection system (IDS)
- Lawful interception
- Flow analysis
- Network monitoring
- Network tap
- Protocol analyzer
- Ingress filtering
- Egress filtering
- SS7 probe
