On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 12:05 +1100, Tony Sceats wrote:
> firstly you would run any number of the tools already mentioned on the
> bridged machine - ntop, ethereal/wireshark, snmp, iptables, use ip
> accounting etc etc.. hell even tcpdump would be fine, if a little
> ugly.. for a quick & dirty I'd say ntop is your best bet though 
> 
> but really, whilst these are all valid, you do only have 8 machines
> there, don't you? Depending upon the (political) environment there,
> simply running ntop and/or ethereal/wireshark on each of these
> machines for 5 minutes may be a better solution than re-wiring the
> network, causing an outage, and for a net loss of efficiency (ie, turn
> switches to hubs) or going to all the bother of building a dual-homed
> machine, setting up bridging, then analysing the traffic etc.. 8
> machines isn't all that many after all.. and if it's not a cumulative
> problem - eg, one machine with a virus, then this will identify the
> source of the problem pretty quickly and much much easier than
> anything else mentioned.. 
> 

Actually the politics isn't difficult - It's my network, so they could
either put up with it or get their own ;-)

OTOH, if one of the machines is compromised I'm not sure that running
any software on that machine is necessarily going to help. I still think
that knowing the traffic for the entire network is very useful, and once
it's done the tool is there forever. I can see that ideally this would
be done from a gateway, but that's not an option.


> but as everyone's answers already point to, you're far better off
> trying to get access to the gateway or asking whoever manages it to
> look into the problem than doing anything else
> 
> 
> On Jan 9, 2008 11:48 AM, david <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>         If I understand all this properly, I have two sane choices:
>         
>         * put a dumb hub between the router and network switch, plug a
>         promiscuous box into it and run something like ethereal on it
>         * put a linux box instead of the dumb hub, set it up as a
>         bridge and run 
>         (what?) to monitor traffic
>         
>         does that sound right? If so, option one sounds a lot easier.
>         
>         many thanks...
>         
>         David.
>         
>         
>         
>         On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 09:35 +1100, Dean Hamstead wrote: 
>         > these two links might help
>         >
>         > http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bridge+Firewall.html
>         >
>         > http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Net:Bridge
>         >
>         > Dean
>         >
>         > Alex Samad wrote:
>         > > On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 06:53:51AM +0000, Visser, Martin
>         wrote:
>         > >> This won't work if it is a network with a dumb
>         (cheap/unmanaged) switch. (An old dumb hub/repeater would be
>         fine but almost no one uses these nowdays). 
>         > >>
>         > >> You really either need to get access to the gateway (and
>         even then it may not support any decent stats or raw capture)
>         or have a switch that supports port mirroring (where it makes
>         a copy of all the traffic on all ports to a particular
>         nominated port). 
>         > >
>         > > or get a linux box with 2 nic and bridge between the
>         switch and then gateway
>         > >> There is a "bad" (read crackers) tool called ettercap
>         which can trick all your hosts to send their traffic to
>         another other host by spoofing ARP responses, but in my
>         opinion it will generally degrade your network and hence
>         interfere in your measurement, so you probably should ignore
>         this. 
>         > >>
>         > >>
>         > >> Martin Visser
>         > >>
>         > >> Technology Consultant
>         > >> Technology Solutions Group - HP Services
>         > >>
>         > >> 410 Concord Road 
>         > >> Rhodes NSW  2138
>         > >> Australia
>         > >>
>         > >> Mobile: +61-411-254-513
>         > >> Fax: +61-2-9022-1800
>         > >> E-mail: martin.visserAThp.com
>         > >>
>         > >> This email (including any attachments) is intended only
>         for the use of the individual or entity named above and may
>         contain information that is confidential, proprietary or
>         privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please
>         notify HP immediately by return email and then delete the
>         email, destroy any printed copy and do not disclose or use the
>         information in it. 
>         > >>
>         > >>
>         > >> -----Original Message-----
>         > >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>         [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aleksey
>         Tsalolikhin
>         > >> Sent: Tuesday, 8 January 2008 4:10 PM
>         > >> To: [email protected]
>         > >> Subject: Re: [SLUG] measuring traffic 
>         > >>
>         > >> Have you tried ntop?  It should show you what the top
>         usage is on your network.  That might be the answer you are
>         looking for.
>         > >>
>         > >> Best,
>         > >> -at 
>         > >>
>         > >> On Jan 7, 2008 8:49 PM, david <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>         wrote:
>         > >>> I have a local network for which I do not have access to
>         the gateway 
>         > >>> host.
>         > >>>
>         > >>> What tool would folk suggest to determine what and how
>         much traffic is
>         > >>> going to what port on which host?
>         > >>>
>         > >>> I've got 8 hosts on the network which are a mixture of
>         mac and linux, 
>         > >>> mostly on public IP addresses, and the bandwidth is
>         getting chewed up
>         > >>> by something but i can't tell what.
>         > >>>
>         > >>> thanks...
>         > >>> 
>         > >>> David.
>         > >>>
>         > >>> --
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