>Once you get tired of spending expensive labor time on this project, you can >throw some >grad students, xboxes and scapy in a room and have them automate the process >for
Actually, this is exactly what we do now .. we host LAN parties (usually right after Christmas when new games come out) and have everyone plug their toys into monitoring switches and get their frag on while the engineers in the back of the room watch the packets and tweak stuff in realtime. This not only fixes the problem (sometimes) but it garners an incredible amount of good will because ... when was the last time YOUR helpdesk invited you down to game at their office so they could help you reduce your lag? If you are in a position to do so, consider it. You already have a bunch of HDTVs and projectors in the conference room .. order some Subway/Pizza and make an afternoon of it. It's also a non-creepy way to do "network analysis" .. when they can walk back and see what you're doing and why. Of course we can do it the other way too but we've found it works way better to fiddle with it in realtime versus examine a pcap, tweak, update ticket, wait, repeat ... I do appreciate all the responses on/off list and those of you that reached out to help in some way I will contact privately in return. Thanks NANOG, and goodnight. The red button at the right will unlock the door. -Michael Holstein -Network & Data Security -Cleveland State University
