A method and apparatus are disclosed herein for retrieving network traffic data. In one embodiment, a networking apparatus comprises a memory; a network device; and a processing unit coupled to the network device and the memory. The processing unit is operable to execute a data engine that performs bulk data transfers from the network device periodically into a data buffer in the memory and translates data received from the network device, based on a mapping definition, into a user defined format for export to one or more applications running on networking apparatus.