Re: Average delay per packet observation

[Steven Sturges via Snort-devel <snort-devel () lists snort org>]

The only difference between those is the IP addresses/ports, and one 
with TTL.
5 different copies of sid 278 will be evaluated at the same time. Adding 
sid 279
on top of that, the only difference in checking is the source IP, which 
can evaluate
quickly.  Similar for the destination IP and port rules.  The one with 
TTL has a single
rule option check, once that check is made, the similar copies of SID 
280 are not
adding additional evaluation time beyond the other 4 rules.

As the number of alerts getting generated for each packet likely goes 
up, you could
be simply measuring an I/O impact and/or a queuing.  By default, Snort 
will queue 8 of
alerts and only log 3 - so additional matches need to get checked for 
priority and
higher priority alerts, based on the prioritization order as defined or 
the default -- are
kept at the front of the queue.

This sounds like a research project and I'd recommend you look at the 
Snort code itself,
use a profiling tool, something like vtune, to determine how your rules 
are impacting
your observed "delay factor", relative to whatever you are using to 
measure that.

On 7/7/17 9:57 AM, Navdeep Uniyal wrote:
> Hi Steven,
>
> Below are the rules I am using in my snort.conf:
>
> alert udp any any -> any any (msg:"GENERAL UDP ALERT!!! UDP Packet 
> Received";sid:278;rev:3;)
>
> alert udp 172.17.0.3 any -> any any (msg:"SENDER IP ALERT!!! IP 
> Address found and now printing the same";sid:279;rev:3)
>
> alert udp any any -> any any (msg:"TIME TO LIVE ALERT!!! TTL- 
> TTL<=60.. FOUND!!!";ttl:<=60;sid:280;rev:3;)
>
> alert udp any any -> 10.10.1.101 any (msg:"RECEIVER IP ALERT!!!! 
> Receiver IP Address Found...";sid:281;rev:3;)
>
> alert udp any any -> any 8999 (msg:"PORT ALERT!!!! UDP packets sent to 
> PORT 8999";sid:282;rev:3;)
>
> These are the set of 5 rules which I am repeating (with different sid) 
> to create 10,20,40 and 80 rules.
> As I understood from your explanation, the matching algorithms will 
> work only for 5 times in all the cases ( please correct me if I am 
> wrong).
>
> Now since I am logging the alerts on the screen, I am getting alerts 
> for all 10,20,40 or 80 rules in each case. What could be the potential 
> reason of getting the delay in a factor of 10^-4 in case of 80 rules 
> but for 40,20 and 10, it is for a factor of 10^-8.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Navdeep
>
> *From:*Steven Sturges [mailto:ststurge () cisco com]
> *Sent:* Freitag, 7. Juli 2017 15:47
> *To:* Navdeep Uniyal; snort-devel () lists snort org
> *Subject:* Re: [Snort-devel] Average delay per packet observation
>
> The matching algorithms in Snort do not repeat the work when the rule 
> options are the same.
> And further, as soon as one of the options does not match, evaluation 
> of that entire group of
> rules is halted.
>
> As I noted, it depends on the makeup of the individual rules 
> themselves.  If the rules have
> 'content' options, as is recommended, and that pattern is not present 
> in the traffic being tested,
> there is no additional evaluation on the rules at all.  For example, 
> even with 10000 rules where
> the pattern from the content option is not present in the traffic, you 
> would get roughly the same
> performance as if you had only 10 of those rules.
>
> On 7/7/17 4:52 AM, Navdeep Uniyal wrote:
>
>     Thank you for your reply.
>
>     In my case I am using a set of 5 rules repeated over(with
>     different sid). So approximately each set should take the same
>     amount of time relatively.
>
>     Example: 80 rules have (16*5) rules
>
>         40 rules have (8*5) rules
>
>         20 rules have (4*5) rules
>
>         10 rules have (2*5) rules
>
>     By this way, I assume the delay should get halved in each case
>     from 80 to 40. But this is not happening as we can see from the
>     results. Could you please help me in getting the explanation.
>
>     Best Regards,
>
>     Navdeep
>
>     *From:*Steven Sturges [mailto:ststurge () cisco com]
>     *Sent:* Mittwoch, 5. Juli 2017 13:43
>     *To:* Navdeep Uniyal; snort-devel () lists snort org
>     <mailto:snort-devel () lists snort org>
>     *Subject:* Re: [Snort-devel] Average delay per packet observation
>
>     Rules are not processed sequentially.  Your expectations should
>     depend on the nature of the
>
>     individual rules themselves.
>
>     On 7/4/17 10:16 AM, Navdeep Uniyal wrote:
>
>         Hello everyone,
>
>         I got some interesting results running snort (inline) for
>         experiment with 80, 40, 20, 10 number of rules:
>
>         All rules are matching all the incoming UDP packets. Below are
>         the average delay per packet I found in the 4 experiments:
>
>         80 rules:              Average delay:  0.000680666813409 seconds
>
>         40 rules:              Average delay:  2.06440535385e-08 seconds
>
>         20 rules:              Average delay:  1.6644513569e-08 seconds
>
>         10 rules:              Average delay: 1.43723338507e-08 seconds
>
>         These results are quite confusing as I expect, on decreasing
>         from 80 to 40 rules the average delay should be approximately
>         halved. But I can’t see such behavior here.
>
>         What could be the possible reason, if someone could explain.
>
>         Best Regards,
>
>         *Navdeep*
>
>
>
>
>
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