Hardware

The minimum hardware requirements for FrameSeer are the same as those for Mac OS X: a Macintosh computer with built-in Firewire and at least 256 MB of RAM.

Naturally, more RAM is always better. We recommend 512MB to minimise swap overheads during large captures.

Hardware Limitations

FrameSeer’s ability to determine the state of a physical interface is dependent upon information it obtains from Mac OS X. In turn, Mac OS X depends upon information it obtains from the hardware. Unfortunately, not all hardware provides all the requisite information. In particular, third-party Ethernet NICs should be considered suspect until proven otherwise.

Operating System Software

Beginning with version 1.7, FrameSeer is released as a “universal binary” and is only warranted to run on Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later.

BSD Sub-system Software

FrameSeer employs the services of tcpdump which is installed as part of the BSD subsystem. If you did not install the BSD subsystem when you installed Mac OS X, you will need to do that before you can run FrameSeer. FrameSeer produces an alert to this effect.