Traffic Analysis Tool Needed

Hey everyone,

Anybody know of a quick and easy network traffic analysis tool that would help me ID what computer on my network is using X bandwidth? Specifically, on my 700 PC network I want to ID a computer that's dragging the most Internet traffic.

Thanks!

mjv

 

700 PC's is a good size network. What routing equipment and firewall do you have on the connection? Often there are some monitoring features in equipment commonly used to support this size network.

Tools that do a fairly good job of this fall into a few catagories. Traffic shaping and bandwidth control, like PacketShaper, Content filtering like Websense or Surfcontrol (now merged), firewalls like Fortigate with a FortiAnalyzer, or router plug in's like Cisco's Network Analysis Module.

An alternative to the commercial products above would be any number of Linux tools. The easiest way to obtain them is download VMWares free virtual player and the Network Security Toolkit appliance at http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/141 There are a number of preinstalled Linux security tools that will tell you what you want to know in this package.

 

Thanks for the reply.
You've given me a good start.

We use a Cisco PIX firewall. However I am not a Cisco guy per se. I have an outside engineer handle the PIX for me.

The Linux idea is intriguing to me because I was hoping to find a tool that I could use on a desktop pc in my office.

Thanks for the start.

mjv