Running Snort with Napatech SmartNICs

Running Open-Source Libraries and Applications with Napatech SmartNICs

Platform

Napatech SmartNIC

Content Type

Application Note

Capture Software Version

Link™ Capture Software 12.11

Use the load distribution feature of Napatech SmartNICs to improve performance of Snort.

This describes a configuration example to use the load distribution feature of Napatech SmartNICs which improves performance of Snort.

Configure Napatech SmartNICs following instructions in Napatech SmartNIC Configuration.
Start the Snort instances, one per CPU core. Each instance must have a CPU affinity set using the taskset command. Replace <cpu> with the target CPU core number and <nt3g#> with the target interface number between nt3g0 and nt3g15.
```
# taskset -c <cpu> /usr/local/snort/bin/snort -i <nt3g#> \
-A fast -K none -N -b -c /usr/local/snort/etc/snort.conf
```
Start the monitoring and profiling tools for performance monitoring. See SmartNIC Performance Monitoring.