# Building a Network sensor on FreeBSD 8.0



## thecoffeeguy (Feb 5, 2010)

I am in the process of building a Network sensor using FreeBSD 8.0. The server will be built on a Dell 2950 with (2) Quad Core Procs, 8gigs of memory and at this time, just a single RAID 1 drive with 146gigs memory. Eventually, I will be adding a second RAID volume with RAID 0 for optimal performance. This is where I will write the data.

This server also has 4 NIC's in it, 2 on board and 2 added via PCI card. All 4 NIC's are gig nics.

Now, I built the server and I am looking for some tips for optimizing capturing traffic, using tcpdump and snort. I was looking around trying to find some additional information on perhaps kernel tuning, but havent found anything.

Anyone have any tips or tricks for optimizing this box? A lot of traffic will be flowing through this box (in passive mode) and want to make sure I can see all of it.

I appreciate the help.


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