Taming the “Too Big to Open” Capture: How CloudShark Enterprise Makes Massive PCAPs Usable Again

Multi-gigabit links, high-speed capture appliances, and modern distributed systems don’t just produce more network data - they produce mountains of it. In many organizations, the packet captures that matter most are also the hardest to work with. Analysts attempt to grab a PCAP to confirm whether the problem sits on the network or in the application layer, only to find that their workstation hangs, their analyzer freezes, or the file transfer alone costs precious time and bandwidth.

 

This is the “too big to open” problem, and it’s become one of the most persistent obstacles in network and cybersecurity analysis. Large File Support in CloudShark Enterprise was built to eliminate that obstacle completely.

 

This article walks through the core problems modern teams face, the gaps created by legacy workflows, and the new end-to-end approach CloudShark enables - centered around Time to First Packet, intelligent splitting tools, and Deep Search across massive datasets. It covers our recent webinar with Zach Chadwick, which you can watch here:

Why large captures break traditional workflows

Large captures push against the limits of both open-source tools and the hardware analysts use every day. As speeds increase, even a few seconds of traffic can create a file so large that traditional analysis becomes painful or impossible. Common symptoms include:

• Long transfer times just to begin troubleshooting
• Workstation freezes or crashes when loading multi-gigabyte PCAPs
• Slow or unresponsive filters, forcing analysts to wait after every click
• No practical way to share relevant traffic with colleagues
• Ballooning egress and bandwidth costs when multiple analysts download the same file

And yet - ironically - these giant captures often contain the details needed most: intermittent failures, multi-host sequences, authentication problems, timing anomalies, and emergent security behavior.

Why “just capture less” doesn’t work

The industry’s default advice has often been “just capture less”. Indeed, that is the advice we used to give to CloudShark users as well! But intermittent problems rarely follow a script, and teams capturing off span ports or high-speed taps have no choice but to record everything. You often don’t get a second chance in the field.

Traditional alternatives don’t help much:

• Traffic summaries and dashboards show trends, not payloads.
• Limiting capture size removes critical application-layer context.
• Filtering during capture risks discarding the very packets you need later, and requires that you already know what you are looking for.
• Manual splitting with tools like editcap works - but only after you’ve already downloaded the file, decided on a strategy blind, and created dozens or hundreds of chunks to hunt through.

These gaps create a workflow bottleneck that slows incident response, increases MTTR, and frustrates analysts whose job relies on rapid access to precise packet detail.

Making massive captures immediately usable

CloudShark Enterprise was designed to streamline packet analysis at scale, allowing teams to work from a central, on-premises environment that delivers fast, browser-based access to captures that come from multiple sources without ever moving data to endpoints.

Large File Support expands that foundation with new workflows that solve the “too big to open” problem at every stage:

1. Time to First Packet (TTFP): see usable packets in seconds

Large File Support detects when a capture exceeds administrative thresholds and loads the first set of packets instantly - typically the first 5,000 to 100,000 - while the rest continues to load in the background.

This matters because:

• Analysts start working immediately.
• They can validate that the right event was captured before deeper effort begins.
• They gain early visibility into bandwidth spikes, protocol mix, and host activity.
• The system stays responsive - no freezes, no spinning fans, no stalled UI.

When a massive capture won’t even open locally, CloudShark shows the first packets in seconds.

2. Split PCAP: Built-in workflows for time slices, packet counts, and intervals

Instead of relying on CLI tools, CloudShark provides a built-in Split PCAP panel that works directly on the server. No downloads, no re-uploads, no external preprocessing. Three primary methods match the classic editcap model:

Extract a time slice

Select a time window visually using the navigation chart and extract only the relevant section into a new session. Ideal when:

• You know when the incident occurred
• You want to isolate or avoid a traffic spike
• You need to share only the relevant window with another team

Split by equal duration

Break a file into consistent time intervals - useful for comparing behavior across an event:

• Quickly spot anomalies by comparing file sizes
• Identify periods of loss, black holes, or traffic drops
• Support correlation with external logs or monitoring timelines

Split by packet count

Create uniform chunks that load quickly and support fast iteration. This works particularly well coupled with Deep Search when you are still determining where the anomaly lives.

Each split becomes its own CloudShark session, inheriting:

• Tags
• Profiles and column settings
• Decode-as rules
• Packet annotations
• Full sharing and retention controls

This preserves analysis continuity and prevents the proliferation of local files on endpoints.

3. Deep search across all splits: find what matters instantly

Splitting a massive capture creates manageable chunks - but the key challenge is finding the right one.

Deep Search solves this by letting analysts apply Wireshark’s standard display filters across an entire set of splits (or across the whole CloudShark repository). Search runs in parallel on the server and returns matching sessions within seconds.

With Deep Search:

• Analysts zero in on the relevant packets without opening dozens of files
• The display filter is already applied when the matching chunk opens
• Workflows scale linearly - even across multi-gigabyte datasets
• Teams find cross-chunk patterns that traditional tools simply cannot reveal

In our webinar example, a multi-gigabyte workstation capture was split into dozens of smaller files, then searched for DNS queries related to a development server. Deep Search immediately surfaced the four relevant segments, revealing a sequence of IPv6 failures and unreachable hosts. That insight would have been nearly impossible to find manually.

End-to-end workflow for large capture analysis

Putting it all together:

1. Upload (or ingest) a large capture directly into CloudShark
2. Open it instantly with Large File Preview
3. Inspect the first packets and navigation chart to understand the scope
4. Choose a split strategy - time slice, duration, or packet count
5. Instantly generate new sessions without downloads or CLI preprocessing
6. Run Deep Search across the splits to locate anomalies fast
7. Open, analyze, tag, annotate, and share only the relevant PCAPs
8. Retain or delete files according to compliance policies

The entire process stays server-side. Files remain secure. Analysts collaborate by sharing URLs - not raw captures.

This workflow solves the three hardest parts of analyzing huge PCAPs:

• Making the file usable
• Finding what matters
• Sharing the results across teams

CloudShark turns massive captures from a liability into a resource.

Try large file support for yourself

Large File Support is available beginning in CloudShark Enterprise 5.1. Existing customers can upgrade through the QA Cafe Lounge.

 

If your team struggles with giant PCAPs - or avoids capturing what they truly need because the files become unmanageable - this feature solves that problem outright.

 

Organizations evaluating CloudShark Enterprise can request a trial that includes full Large File Support, Deep Search, and unlimited-instance deployment.