Patent ID: 8848541

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, by a protocol analysis controller device, one or more protocol analysis requests; transmitting, by the protocol analysis controller device, one or more control signals, based at least in part on the one or more protocol analysis requests; receiving, by a multipurpose interface device, the one or more control signals via a network, wherein the one or more control signals indicate whether to transmit protocol analysis data based on live capturing or non-live capturing; capturing, by the multipurpose interface device, data traffic transmitted on a test network based on the one or more control signals, wherein the capturing is one of the live capturing or the non-live capturing; analyzing, by the multipurpose interface device, the captured data traffic based on the one or more control signals to produce the protocol analysis data; and outputting, by the multipurpose interface device, the protocol analysis data via the network, wherein the outputting further comprises at least one of: transmitting, based on the live capturing, the protocol analysis data to a user system for display, or transmitting, based on the non-live capturing, the protocol analysis data to one or more storage devices.