I use iptables to block different kind of attacks on my server. We have a different set of rules along with different rate-limit rules. Now I also use a script that would observe the threshold if it were greater than 10mb/s and dump all the packets to a file. This script keeps running all the time in a screen session and uses the following command to dump:
tcpdump -nn -s0 -c 2000 -w Attack.cap
sleep 300
Once attacked, it waits 5 minutes to check for another attack (sleep 300). Now I doubt if during the packets capture process, iptables still work because in /var/messages I see lines like "eth0 entered promiscuous mode" and "eth0 left promiscuous mode" so it might over-look iptables?