Simics comes with a eth-injector class that takes a pcap format file and injects the packets described in the file into the simulated network.
Each packet in a pcap file has a time stamp that usually is the absolute time when the packet was recorded. The eth-injector starts injecting the first packet of the pcap file directly after the start command has been run. The consecutive packets are injected after an amount of virtual time that is equal to the difference in time stamp between that packet and the first packet of the pcap file. If the packet cannot be injected because of bandwidth limitations, it is ignored. Incoming packets are ignored as well.
It is common that the CRC of Ethernet frames are not recorded in pcap files. In Simics, the whole Ethernet frame has to be present for a correct simulation result. The -no-crc option of the <eth-injector>.start command can be used to tell the injector that the pcap file contains no CRC. The injector then adds a CRC to each frame that Simics will handle as if it was correct. By not using the -no-crc option the frames in the pcap file are injected as they were recorded, without any modification.
The eth-injector can be connected to an Ethernet link like any other Ethernet device. It can also be connected directly to another Ethernet device without the need to have a link between the device and the eth-injector.
The following example creates a new eth-injector, connects it to an already existing ethernet_switch of name ethernet_switch0 and starts packet playback from a file named test.pcap:
simics> load-module eth-injector-comp simics> new-eth-injector-comp name = inj0 Created instantiated 'eth_injector_comp' component 'inj0' simics> connect ethernet_switch0.link inj0.link simics> inj0.injector.start file = test.pcap