Quick questions about recieved packets

[Joseph Nicholson <wjnicholson () gmail com>]

I am working on tweaking my first snort sensor of four for my enviroment. I
have run across something that concerns me, but part of me is saying it is
not what I think it is. Any clarification will be appreciated.
 When I run snort manually for testing I get the following when i stop it. I
think the way i am reading this is incorrect. When I look at this, I see
that snort dropped 179457 packets because it couldn't process them.
 Snort received 186246 packets
Analyzed: 6789(3.645%)
Dropped: 179457(96.355%)
 My gut instinct is telling me that it dropped 179457 packets because it
felt there was no threat from them and that the 6789 it analyzed looked
suspicious.
 Once again thank you in advance for any information on this.

--
Joseph Nicholson
Network Administrator
Fairfield Residential