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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!blackbush.xlink.net!scsing.switch.ch!swsbe6.switch.ch!swidir.switch.ch!in2p3.fr!oleane!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!news.kreonet.re.kr!news.dacom.co.kr!newsfeed.internetmci.com!EU.net!Norway.EU.net!nntp-oslo.UNINETT.no!nntp-trd.UNINETT.no!due.unit.no!Steinar.Haug From: Steinar.Haug@runit.sintef.no (Steinar Haug) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Looking for suitable HW and SW for network traffic measurement platform Date: 21 Nov 1995 14:59:02 GMT Organization: SINTEF RUNIT, Trondheim, Norway Lines: 37 Message-ID: <STEINAR.HAUG.95Nov21155902@bokfink.runit.sintef.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: bokfink.runit.sintef.no Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1333 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:9049 comp.os.linux.misc:70988 We're looking for suitable HW and SW for a network traffic measurement platform. What we'd like to do is: - Measure traffic on at least four Ethernets from the same box, and be able to handle close to four full Ethernets streams of traffic with average packet size of around 250 bytes. - Low-level packet capture via Berkeley Packet Filter. - Higher level measurement via tcpdump, NNstat and various other programs. We would normally *not* want to log every packet to disk, but it would be an advantage to be able to do so. We're thinking along the lines of a PCI based Pentium box, with a suitable amount of memory (64 MByte or so), large amounts of SCSI disk, and four or more Ethernet cards. Possible problems we foresee are: - Lack of support for PCI based Ethernet cards in NetBSD/FreeBSD. Last time I checked, the 3Com 590 card, for instance, was not supported under FreeBSD. What PCI based cards *are* supported? - Number of free slots in a PCI based system. As I mentioned, we'd like to have at least four Ethernet cards, possibly more. We'd prefer multiport Ethernet cards (something along the lines of Sun's Quad Ethernet card would be great), in order to use fewer slots, but haven't really found any such cards for the x86 PCI platform. I would be highly sceptical of an ISA based solution, given the large amount of traffic this box should be able to handle. Can anybody suggest suitable HW and SW for these requirements? Any specific reason to prefer NetBSD or FreeBSD? Would Linux be better? (Any support for BPF in Linux?) Steinar Haug, SINTEF RUNIT, University of Trondheim, NORWAY Email: Steinar.Haug@runit.sintef.no, sthaug@nethelp.no