firewalling snort machine

["Basil Saragoza" <snortlst () hotmail com>]

I have a snort machine exposed to the internet (connected to our internet switch, it monitors traffic coing to the 
firewall public nic).
Is it safe to install firewall on snort machine and disable ALL incoming traffic to snort machin from the internet? 
Will it affect snort functionality?
(My guess would be it won't cause snort sniffs packets fro the switch and it is not dependent on internet connectivity, 
but I just want to make sure that mu guess is correct)
thx.