DROP DETECTION AND PROTECTION FOR NETWORK PACKET MONITORING IN VIRTUAL PROCESSING ENVIRONMENTS

Systems and methods are disclosed for drop detection and protection with respect to packet monitoring in virtual processing environments. Tap agents monitor and capture packets from the network traffic associated with network applications running within these virtual processing environments. Sequence numbers are added in packet encapsulation before tap packets are forwarded to tool agents. The tool agents then use the sequence numbers to detect packet drops within the tap packets. After drop detection, the tool agents send drop detection messages to an agent controller, and the agent controller generates and sends reconfiguration messages to the tap agents based upon the drop detection messages. The tool agents can also send drop detection messages directly to the tap agents. The tap agents adjust their operations based upon the reconfiguration messages and/or the drop detection messages to reduce packet drops within subsequent tap packets communications.