IDS mailing list archives

Re: port bonding and taps


From: Jeffrey.Stebelton () bisys com
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 10:57:54 -0400


What we have done is to set a 10 Mb Ethernet hub up near the tap and run
both tap ports into it. We then plug whatever sniffers you want into the
hub and you will see both sides of the traffic.

Jeff Stebelton
Manager, Network Security
BISYS Network Security Group
614-470-8249 direct
614-203-2563 cell



|---------+---------------------------->
|         |           "John Flynn"     |
|         |           <johnflynn@fastma|
|         |           il.fm>           |
|         |                            |
|         |           10/01/2003 02:53 |
|         |           PM               |
|         |                            |
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  |       To:       focus-ids () securityfocus com                                                                   |
  |       cc:                                                                                                     |
  |       Subject:  port bonding and taps                                                                         |
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Hi all,

I'm trying to set up various snort boxes, both on fiber and copper taps.
In order to reconstruct both sides of the stream I understand that one
needs to use multiple cards since the tap outputs the tx and rx on
separate channels. The problem is that to make snort alert correctly one
really has to aggregate the directions. This is commonly done using a
spanning port, but we do not have enough of those at our facility to go
around. In linux (and in general) it seems this idea is called port
bonding. There is a bonding kernel module for linux and appropriate
commands for setting this up (ifenslave etc), but it seems to be very
poorly documented. I have tried to set up bonding multiple times and
could not seem to get it to work. Does anyone have good documentation on
how to do this type of set up, or perhaps a better way to do snort+taps
without using a spanning port?
Thanks,
John Flynn

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Captus Networks IPS 4000
Intrusion Prevention and Traffic Shaping Technology to: 
 - Instantly Stop DoS/DDoS Attacks, Worms & Port Scans
 - Automatically Control P2P, IM and Spam Traffic
 - Precisely Define and Implement Network Security & Performance Policies
FREE Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit - WhitePapers - Live Demo 
http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CaptusNetworks_focus-ids_000101
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