what is a good network monitoring package for linux

supertechmyers · 01-30-2004, 05:50 PM

Today at work we set up a linux box to do monitoring of network traffic. currently we are running blackbox with just ethereal running as a packet traffic anylizer. Eventually I would like to have this box do more safisticated monitoring like Servers Alive which is currently running on a console box of ours. Any suggestions of programs to look for would be great.

stickman · 01-30-2004, 09:23 PM

Nagios, OpenNMS, and Snort should give you a good start.

h/w · 01-30-2004, 10:05 PM

ettercap

supertechmyers · 01-31-2004, 04:03 AM

cool thanks alot. Monday I will be sure to try these.

h/w · 01-31-2004, 01:34 PM

heh, ettercap is downright scary. i used that once in school monitoring my school network (it works for both wired and wireless lans), and it wasn;t really a good thing to see people's passwords (those who were telnet'ing) flying by.
the most surprised were the IM users, whose conversations would show up as they type - they were impressed, but not amused. lol.

no, i wasnt snooping into anyones' biz.

AfterBurn · 01-31-2004, 02:29 PM

i use IPTraf on my server. it works well enough for me but it may not be as advanced as you want.

supertechmyers · 01-31-2004, 05:18 PM

your right ethercap is downright scary i just installed it on my home machine and was very impressed. But I need some sort of graphical interface for easy glancing. I wonder if anyone has written a Gui front end for it.

david_ross · 01-31-2004, 05:28 PM

Ethereal is probably the easiest for watching packets and for network service monitoring you can't beat nagios.

stickman · 02-03-2004, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by supertechmyers
your right ethercap is downright scary

One word of caution before employing any sniffing/snooping tools in a workplace: Save yourself some possible headaches, and make sure that you have an appropriate security policy and usage guidelines in place before you start using them.