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Subject: Re: Options to monitor/sniff network traffic under a vm
From: John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net>
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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:26:34 -0600
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To: carlopmart <carlopmart@gmail.com>
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On Aug 25, 2013, at 5:38 AM, carlopmart <carlopmart@gmail.com> wrote:

> I need to monitor/sniff network traffic for three subnets (1 GiB nets) =
and I need to do this using a virtual guest under an ESXi 5 host (yes, =
it is a "handicap").

Not sure about your questions below, but doesn't ESXi 5 support port =
mirroring in the virtual switch? That seems like a better place to do =
most of the heavy lifting. You could still attach your FreeBSD instance =
to the monitor port(s) for analysis. That would hopefully help at least =
with a) by reducing the number of virtual NICs needed.

> I would like to use FreeBSD 8.4 + netmap, but I see some problems:
>=20
> a) How can I avoid sharing interrupts for nics interfaces?? This vm =
needs to use 6 nic interfaces.
>=20
> b) Which is best: em or ixgb emulated drivers??
>=20
> c) Is it a good idea to enable polling in these nics??