What to use to monitor traffic?

[reicherb]

I'm getting close to giving my VBricks to my users. (see more here.)

Now my question is how do I make sure my I'm not flooding any points on my network. I've looked at MRTG and it looks pretty good, except I'd like to find something that poles more frequently that every 5 minutes. It's my understanding that multicast traffic can flood a domain for a very short period of time when the mulitcast starts or stops. I also don't have an NT or *NIX box though I can put one up.

What other options do I have available? What do you guys use and what features should I be looking for? I should point out that I work for a school and money is very limited.

Thanks again to the Great Minds here at AnandTech.

 

[miguel]

There's a ton of stuff for monitoring network traffic. My company builds high-end broadband test equipment, too!

What sort of interface to the network do you need? It sounds like Ethernet from your post. Maybe get Sniffer and plug it into a hub somewhere...?

 

[reicherb]

Yes. Sorry, need to view ethernet traffic on Cisco Layer 2 and 3 Switches and a Cisco 4006 Router.

I'd rather not have to go to each segment to check the traffic.

 

[miguel]

Maybe you won't have a choice, considering the budget concerns...I say this because the only way to really monitor an ethernet segment is, well, to have some kind of probe on that segment.

 

[reicherb]

There isn't somthing similar to MRTG that poles the switches and routers to see the traffic?

 

[Nothinman]

You can set how often MRTG runs, atleast you can on unix becaues it just runs from cron periodically.