nanog mailing list archives

Re: Let's talk about Distance Sniffing/Remote Visibility


From: "E.B. Dreger" <eddy+public+spam () noc everquick net>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 17:59:20 +0000 (GMT)


Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:19:55 -0500
From: Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>

(snipping throughout)


Disk I/O on a sniffer box? Sounds like you've been sniffing
something other than packets my friend. :)

I like to log interesting packets; I agree with Carl.


You can build your own box like that easily enough. If you're going for
FastE sniffing I highly recommend the Adaptec Quartet 4-port cards. If

D-Link DFE-570TX are _very_ cheap if you're happy with 32-bit /
33 MHz PCI.


[ snip FreeBSD + Alteon ]

I did not know about the partial-packet DMA transfers.  Mmmmm....


Or if you're comfortable writing kernel code, I recommend you
make a character device for sniffer device control, and use it
to pass page-aligned malloc'd memory pointers from userland
into the nic driver, which you then pass to the card as the RX
ring buffers. This will let you DMA your packets directly into
userland. If not, at least unhook ether_input(). :)

Never done this.  About how much "capacity" does the zero-copy
approach add?


--
Eddy

Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division
Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita/(Inter)national
Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence

--
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:23:58 +0000 (GMT)
From: A Trap <blacklist () brics com>
To: blacklist () brics com
Subject: Please ignore this portion of my mail signature.

These last few lines are a trap for address-harvesting spambots.  Do NOT
send mail to <blacklist () brics com>, or you are likely to be blocked.


Current thread: