The capture threads can receive packets from the flow manager in their
Threadvars::stream_pq packet queue. This mechanism makes sure the packets
the flow manager injects into the engine are processed by the correct
worker thread.
If the capture thread(s) would not receive packets for a long time, the
Threadvars::stream_pq would not be checked and processed. This could
lead to packet pool depletion in the flow manager. It would also lead
to flows not being timed out/logged until either packets started flowing
again or until the engine was shut down.
The scenario is more likely to happen in a test (e.g. replay) but could
also delay logging on low traffic sensors.