[ARGUS] Best Hardware

Peter Van Epp vanepp at sfu.ca
Tue Oct 12 11:09:20 EDT 2004


	I don't know of anything that will anonymize tcpdump traces which makes
for a problem. If you are only looking for test data then the traces from the
various "capture the flag" contests from the blackhat conferences (tcpdumps from
the test network are online somewhere, although a quick check didn't turn up
the URL, google on blackhat conference should find it, they are on a site 
called something odd like shmoosoft or such like) should do what you want.
	Which brings up the question how fast are your links? Tcpreplay (in the
current version) only seems to make 85 megs or so (unless Aaron has gotten to
tweaking in one of the later releases since last I tried). The original version
would saturate a 100 link for files that will fit in buffer cache, but is 
limited by disk/buffer cache as to how fast it will go. As well at about 200 
megs or so it is said (I haven't verified it not having anything that goes 
that fast yet. although my latest gig sensor's network has achieved over 900 
megs on netperf, just not so far while argus has been watching) that libpcap 
becomes a limiting factor. If you are going faster than that moving to 
gargoyle is probably a better bet since the capture code no longer uses 
libpcap in gargoyle (and for really high speeds you need DAC cards which 
process on card).

Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support 
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 11:40:25PM -0400, slif at bellsouth.net wrote:
> Does anyone have a sanitized tcpdumps that they are willing to share ?
> I'd like to run some load/time trials through tcpreplay to see if my sensors
> can bear the traffic without loss.
> TIA
> -Mike Slifcak
> 
> > 
> > From: Peter Van Epp <vanepp at sfu.ca>
> > Date: 2004/10/11 Mon PM 10:37:15 EDT
> > To: argus-info at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
> > Subject: Re: [ARGUS] Best Hardware
> > 
> > 	Sounds some what similar to where I am. Our commodity link (one of the
> > 4 argus instances now running) does around 60 to 80 megs compressed per hour.
> > Each hour they get post processed (on a box separate from both the sensor and
> > archiving boxes) and at 6 AM (other than this morning :-)) get summarized for
> > the last 24 hours. The main problem for me is memory (currently 750 Megs which
> > maxes out the motherboard on a P3 600) as it sometimes starts swapping and 
> > gets very slow. While I have a pair of dual athelon 1.4 gig SMP boxes, both 
> > are currently being gigabit sensors and the archive and post processing hosts 
> > are both P3 600s. Likely the most useful thing I can do is take a ugly one 
> > (such as last night at 22:00) and run it through on all the machines I have 
> > here and timing it (22:00 seem to be port scan time our way :-)):
> > 
> > -rw-r--r--  1 argus  argus  62153949 Oct 10 22:02 com_argus.2004.10.10.21.00.00.0.gz
> > -rw-r--r--  1 argus  argus  87990295 Oct 10 23:03 com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz
> > -rw-r--r--  1 argus  argus  67225107 Oct 11 00:02 com_argus.2004.10.10.23.00.00.0.gz
> > 	A quick test indicates it more depends on disk speed than CPU :-) so
> > a raid controller may be more of a factor than CPU since performance is about
> > the same on each machine (by wall clock times anyway).
> > 
> > P3 600mhz 750 megs of RAM:
> > 
> > test6% time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn >/dev/null
> > 150.437u 48.115s 3:19.11 99.7%  222+1302k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > test6% time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn > /usr/local/t
> > 153.730u 67.459s 3:42.35 99.4%  224+1325k 2+1901io 0pf+0w
> > test6% ls -l /usr/local/t
> > -rw-r--r--  1 vanepp  wheel  249200362 Oct 11 19:19 /usr/local/t
> > 
> > test6% time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn host 142.58.200.82  >/dev/null
> > 40.572u 28.910s 1:09.62 99.7%   208+1209k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > test6% time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn host 142.58.200.82 > ./t
> > 41.139u 29.120s 1:10.43 99.7%   208+1227k 0+55io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > SMP 1.4 Gig Athelon machine 500 Megs of ram, both with 7200 RPM IDE disk.
> > 
> > %time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn > /dev/null
> > 34.810u 47.074s 1:21.81 100.0%  213+1304k 1+0io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > %time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn > /usr/local/t
> > 36.880u 56.285s 1:33.12 100.0%  214+1324k 0+1901io 0pf+0w
> > %ls -l /usr/local/t
> > -rw-r--r--  1 vanepp  wheel  249200362 Oct 11 19:15 /usr/local/t
> > 
> > %time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn host 142.58.200.82 > /dev/null
> > 5.944u 28.070s 0:33.90 100.3%   205+1242k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > %time ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn host 142.58.200.82 > ./t
> > 6.039u 28.347s 0:34.26 100.3%   205+1262k 0+54io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > 	An older Mac G4 (533 mhz?) 1.5 gigs of ram IDE disk:
> > 
> > [test4:~] vanepp% time /usr/local/bin/ra  -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn >/dev/null
> > 156.000u 150.690s 5:46.06 88.6% 0+0k 0+2io 0pf+0w
> > 
> > 	Which is a fair bit slower at post processing that the PCs (a new G5
> > may do better). This is similar to previous times I've done this, a 600 Meg
> > PC with less memory seems to do better on post processing (capture may be a
> > different matter though).
> > 
> > 	A few pses on the SMP machine indicates it is probably only using one
> > CPU (which was at %97) arguing against SMP as well (this is on FreeBSD 4.10 ):
> > 
> > USER     PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
> > vanepp 24462 87.7  0.3  2084 1492  p0  R+    7:19PM   0:07.04 ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn
> > vanepp 24465  6.7  0.0   608  248  p0  S+    7:19PM   0:00.63 gzip -dc com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz
> > vanepp 24448  0.0  0.2  1320  956  p1  Ss    7:18PM   0:00.01 -csh (csh)
> > 
> > USER     PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
> > vanepp 24462 91.9  0.3  2084 1492  p0  R+    7:19PM   0:37.26 ra -r com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz -nn
> > vanepp 24465  5.9  0.0   608  248  p0  S+    7:19PM   0:02.81 gzip -dc com_argus.2004.10.10.22.00.00.0.gz
> > vanepp 24448  0.0  0.2  1320  956  p1  Ss    7:18PM   0:00.01 -csh (csh)
> > 
> > Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support 
> > Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 08:57:02AM +1000, Andrew Hall wrote:
> > > 
> > > I am looking for the best hardware for the following;
> > > 
> > > - dedicated box for running multiple (>100) different ra queries over 1GB
> > > compressed argus files each day
> > > 
> > > - This host will not be running argus captures itself.
> > > 
> > > Andrew
> > > 
> > > On 12/10/04 8:36 AM, "Steve McInerney" <spm at healthinsite.gov.au> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > "Best" is a somewhat loaded term. :-)
> > > > Best for what? How much data? How much money? How fast are the results
> > > > needed etc etc etc
> > > > 
> > > >  From previous comments (Carter's and Peter Van Epp's???), I understand
> > > > that Mac platforms make excellent argus capture boxen. Something about
> > > > the endian being the right way, from memory. That discussion should be
> > > > in the archives in the last 12 months or so.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I stopped using argus on my Solaris boxes a while ago; wasn't as stable
> > > > as x86/linux and they were waaaay overworked as is - which may have
> > > > influenced the first problem too.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > In our case, the work is currently done on a 1Ghz P3 - but then we don't
> > > > have a lot of data, and how long it takes is largely irrelevant.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Sorry to be so vague...
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > - Steve
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Andrew Hall wrote:
> > > >> What hardware do people recommend for the best crunching of argus files with
> > > >> the various argus clients, in particular ra and racount?
> > > >> 
> > > >> Intel, AMD, Sparc ??
> > > >> 
> > > >> Do these clients make use of an SMP machine (assuming the box is dedicated
> > > >> to log analysis)?
> > > >> 
> > > >> Thanks,
> > > >> 
> > > >> Andrew
> > > >> 
> > > >> 
> > 



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