Efficient use of workstations for passive monitoring of local area networks

Abstract

Effective management of a local area network (LAN) requires not only a protocol to manage the active entities, but also a means to monitor the LAN channel. This is especially true in shared-channel LANs, such as Ethernet, where the behavior of the LAN as a whole may be impractical to deduce from the states of the individual hosts. Passive monitoring can be done using either a dedicated system or a general-purpose system. Dedicated monitors have been favored for several reasons, but recent workstations, when carefully programmed, are sufficiently powerful to serve this function. Using a workstation offers high-performance graphics and a more flexible environment for collecting and presenting LAN behavior.