Sniffer® Portable Professional User's Guide - NetScout

Chapter 6
Capture Buffer
124 Sniffer Portable Professional
Captured packets are stored in a capture buffer. You can display and
analyze the packets currently in the capture buffer or save the packets
to disk. You can load and display previously saved capture files (trace
files). You can even spool captured packets to files in real time,
effectively increasing the size of your capture buffer. Use capture filters
to economize capture buffer space further.
Capture buffer options are tied to the Define Filter function.
To set capture buffer options:
1 Select Define Filter from the Capture menu, then click the Buffer
tab (see Figure 6-2).
2 The following options are available:
Buffer Size. Select a capture buffer size to accommodate the
amount of network traffic you wish to capture. Select a buffer
size from the drop-down list or type in your own value.
You can specify buffer sizes from 256 KB to 384 MB,
depending on how much memory your system has. You must
have at least 10MB more memory than the specified capture
buffer size. For example, to start a capture with the buffer
size specified as 64MB, you must have at least 74 MB of
memory in the system.
NOTE: If you do select a large buffer size, refrain from
running other programs concurrently with Sniffer Portable
Professional. There may be a delay while Sniffer Portable
Professional allocates memory.