Royce,
I
think you missed the point of my previous email. Ethereal is an
indispensable network management tool but it is not a
one-stop shop for network performance analysis. (It ranks second only to perl,
in the order I install software on a new PC).
Start
off by monitoring your servers, routers and switches using MRTG or whatever
network monitoring system you prefer.
* Understand which network
devices are the biggest users.
* Understand when traffic levels are
high (and check to see if the problems disappear when traffic levels are
not)
* Understand whether performance
problems are to do with errors, packet loss, congestion or (as always happens)
is an application issue nothing to do with the network.
Once
you have a fair idea of knowing *what* is wrong with your network (eg "My server
is sending tons of broadcast messages"), should you a use
Ethereal to find out *why* things are going wrong. (eg My server is
spamming ARP messages to get the MAC address of another server I removed
from the network last week).
I like
to think of Ethereal as a microscope, where as MRTG is more like a CCTV camera.
A daily scan through the CCTV TV tells whether there's a need for forensic
research using Ethereal (and Netflow/RMON2/ntop data too).
Cheers,
Alistair
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Title: Message
- Re: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal help Alistair . McGlinchy
- Re: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal help S. Faizi
- RE: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal help David Kuder
- [Ethereal-users] Ethereal help Royce L. Bragg
- RE: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal help Alistair . McGlinchy