SCNM Capture Host

Passive optical tap

We are currently recommending people use the multimode SX 50/50 tap from Netoptics.

Packet Capture Host

We recommend the following hardware configuration (as of mid-2002)

• one of the DDR266, serverworks chipsets boards such as the X5DL8-GG
• Adaptec AIC-7902 dual channel Ultra 320 SCSI adapter onboard
• Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz CPU
• Four DDR 266 (each 512 MB) 2GB total
• ST373405LW 73GB Cheetah
• one Syskonnect V1.x SK-9844SX (dual ports) or two SK-9843SX (single port) PCI 64-bit GigE NIC

Notes:

• Our testing shows there's an I/O performance penalty for adding a second processor. Even if you run a single processor kernel, you lose something like 5%. If you run a SMP kernel it's even worse. It's ok to use dual processor motherboards (they usually have more slots and other features) but we don't recommend using two processors.
• Normally when specing a packet capture system we go for the best I/O performance, then the fastest memory architecture and then the fastest single processor cpu.
• We recommend against RDRAM. Performance is probably similar to DDR but it's more expensive than DDR (and even intel makes DDR boards now, an indication that RDRAM is on the way out).

For more advice on what hardware to use, email us.