Open wide I need to see all your packets! December 12th, 2007
I have been doing alot of reading lately about network monitoring, IDS, network problem diagnosis and other such topics. Out of that reading I have been picking up on something that was totally left out of my education in the finer arts of networking. That something is the necessary use of network TAPS for full visibility of of traffic in a structured switched Ethernet network. I plan on discussing that issue more in the near future. But on the front end I have discovered the need to use the existing SPAN and port mirroring options to get a better view on a highly VLAN’d environment. This article from NetworkIntrusion was just what the doctor ordered. So until I can get my hands on some TAPS and get some articles out about how they have revolutionized my troubleshooting methodology I hope this use of tried and true tools for monitoring switches helps.
