Abstract: The present subject matter relates to computer operating systems, network interface cards and drivers, CPUs, random access memory and high bandwidth speeds. More specifically, a Linux operating system has specially-designed stream buffers, polling systems interfacing with network interface cards and multiple threads to deliver high performance, high bandwidth packets through the kernel to applications. A system and method are provided for capturing, aggregating, pre- analyzing and delivering packets to user space within a kernel to be primarily used by intrusion detection systems at multi-gigabit line rate speeds.