Complete
Full Packet Capture Appliance
SentryWire delivers advanced full packet capture appliances that give enterprises complete visibility into network traffic, both past and present. With forensic-grade data at unmatched speed and scale, organizations can troubleshoot issues, investigate incidents, and strengthen defenses with confidence.
Overview of Our
Full Packet Capture Appliance
SentryWire offers full packet capture solutions and appliances designed for enterprises that require forensic visibility across massive, complex networks. Its distributed architecture eliminates the performance, scalability, and cost limitations of legacy systems, capturing traffic at speeds from 1Mbps to +1Tbps while retaining it for weeks, months, or even years at less than half the cost of competing platforms. Unlike metadata-only monitoring or packet sniffers, SentryWire records complete packets, headers, and payloads, enabling accurate packet analysis and replay.
Unlike traditional single-server tools, SentryWire scales compute and storage seamlessly, delivering lightning-fast searches across 100+ PB of network packets. The platform combines high-speed recording with real-time filtering, visualization, and advanced BPF-syntax analysis. Integrated packet analyzer functionality and network monitoring dashboards allow teams to troubleshoot performance issues, investigate suspicious protocols, and accelerate root-cause analysis.
With extended retention timelines, SentryWire ensures packet data remains available long after most tools have aged out. This matters because state-sponsored intrusions often remain undetected for more than 146 days. Without a high-fidelity packet record, enterprises can’t answer critical questions: when attackers entered, how they moved laterally, or what data was exfiltrated.
Full Packet Capture
Unlike packet sniffers that only inspect headers or metadata, SentryWire captures complete network packets for forensic replay, deep packet inspection, and long-term analysis.
Powerful & Fast Search
Scale searches with compute and storage, streaming results from PCAP files in near real time without slowing down network performance.
Extended Timeline
Retain network traffic for weeks, months, or even years, ensuring analysts can revisit packet data long after most tools have aged out.
Fast Capture Speed
Capture at line rates from 1Mbps to +1Tbps with lossless performance, even during the burstiest network activity.
IDS Search Back
Use intrusion detection signatures to retroactively search stored packet data, identifying threats that only became known after capture.
Intrusion Detection
Integrated Suricata IDS provides real-time detection, network monitoring, and rule-based analysis of suspicious traffic patterns.
Network Operations
Generate logs and analyze network performance metrics, helping teams resolve connectivity issues, congestion, and misconfigurations faster.
Visualization & Analytics
Access interactive dashboards and integrate with tools like Kibana to visualize network traffic, monitor performance, and track anomalies.
Artifact Extraction
Retrieve fully sessionized PCAPs and extract file artifacts directly from captured packets via the web interface.
Additional Platform Capabilities
Full Network Packet Capture Appliance
SentryWire’s appliance captures network packets at line rates from 1Mbps to +1Tbps with lossless, continuous capture. Unlike simple packet sniffers that only sample traffic, it captures and stores every data packet in full for deep packet inspection and analysis.
Powerful & Fast Search
Because of our distributed architecture, the SentryWire appliance scales search as it scales compute and storage. Even when queries produce very large PCAP files, results are streamed in real time.
Extended Appliance Timeline for Forensics
Breach investigations often require looking back 146+ days. SentryWire provides extended filtering, logging, and retention of packet data for weeks, months, or years — often at less than 50% the cost of other systems.
Fast Capture Speeds with the Appliance
SentryWire guarantees lossless capture even under peak loads, scaling seamlessly to support bandwidths up to +1Tbps.
Intrusion Detection with Deep Packet Inspection
The appliance integrates Suricata, supporting IDS, network monitoring, and offline PCAP processing. By combining packet analysis with deep packet inspection, SentryWire identifies complex threats that signature-only systems miss.
Compliance with a Packet Capture Appliance
By capturing both North/South and East/West network traffic, the appliance delivers extended packet records that provide definitive audit evidence.
Visualization & Analytics with the Appliance
Integrations with Kibana, Elastic, and custom dashboards make it easy to track network performance, analyze anomalies, and visualize traffic patterns.
Technology Partners for the Appliance
SentryWire partners with security solution providers across intrusion detection, compliance, and risk management. Our RESTful API integrates seamlessly with Splunk, Elastic, and other leading platforms.
Other Technology Partners & Capabilities
Software Updates: Continuous enhancements keep the full packet capture appliance aligned with evolving threats.
File Hashing: Extract and reconstitute file artifacts from packet captures via the Web UI.
JA3 Hashing & Threat Enrichment: Identify encrypted stream IOCs without decryption.
GeoIP & ASN Enrichment: Enrich metadata logs with location insights.
Enhanced Analytics via Kibana: Build dashboards for traffic anomalies and trends.
Statistical Baselining: Elastic-based analytics detect anomalies in network performance automatically.
Network Operations Analytics: In-browser packet analysis reveals congestion, DHCP issues, and connectivity problems.
How to Read a Packet Capture
Reading a packet capture involves inspecting headers and payloads to understand what happened on the network at a specific time. Analysts typically use packet sniffers, packet analysis tools, or integrated analytics platforms such as Wireshark and tcpdump to view:
Headers: Source and destination IPs, ports, protocols, flags, and timestamps.
Payloads: Actual content of the communication, which can reveal commands, file transfers, or malicious code.
SentryWire simplifies this process with sessionized PCAPs and UI-based artifact extraction, allowing security teams to reconstruct full sessions and visualize activity without manually piecing together fragmented streams.
Packet Capture Appliance Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
Full Visibility: Unlike metadata-only tools, a packet capture appliance provides an exact, replayable record of network activity.
Forensic Depth: Enables deep-dive investigations to determine root cause, attacker methods, and data loss scope.
Regulatory & Compliance Support: Offers auditors an authoritative record of what took place on the network.
Future-Proof Analysis: Allows retroactive searches with new threat intel to catch threats discovered months later.
Disadvantages
Storage Requirements: Traditional packet capture tools consume massive storage. SentryWire’s distributed architecture optimizes cost and enables retention at commodity pricing.
Search Performance: Large PCAP files are historically slow. SentryWire scales search with compute, delivering results in minutes instead of hours.
Complexity: Raw packet data can be difficult to interpret. SentryWire integrates visualization, analytics, and IDS search-back to make investigation faster and more intuitive.
FAQs
What is a full packet capture appliance?
A full packet capture appliance is a specialized packet capture tool that records 100% of network traffic. Unlike basic sniffers, it provides forensic-grade evidence for troubleshooting, compliance, and security investigations.
Why should organizations use a packet capture appliance?
A packet capture appliance provides complete network visibility. By continuously recording packets into PCAP files, it supports packet analysis, network performance monitoring, and post-breach investigations.
How does a packet sniffer differ from a full packet capture appliance?
A packet sniffer typically samples or inspects limited traffic in real time, while a full packet capture appliance records all packets continuously, enabling long-term retention, full replay, and forensic analysis.
How does a full packet capture appliance improve security?
By combining continuous capture with deep packet inspection, the appliance enables detection of hidden threats, supports intrusion detection, and validates alerts from SIEMs.
What industries benefit most from packet capture appliances?
Finance, healthcare, and government often use full packet capture appliances for compliance, network security, and forensic packet analysis tools.
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