[SlugBug] OT..Networking Hardware Software Recommendations

[David Leadbeater]

Bill Best wrote:
> Alan Dawson wrote:
> 
> >All,
> >
> >I'm looking to purchase some hardware that can be used for multipurpose 
> >network
> >monitoring, say traffic protocol analysis one day, to IDS another day.  
[..]

I'd say any hardware running Linux will be fine unless you're talking
a mad amount of bandwidth (and then probably things like the quality of
the network card/drivers is more important than raw processor speed)..

> have you had a look at http://www.nagios.org/ or http://bb4.com/ ???
> 
> can't say i've used them yet but they look pretty functional.

ethereal is quite nice for analysing protocols.. Linux has iptraf
which is quite nice for network stats, there is also ntop if you want
a web interface (and/or something which works on *BSD).
snort is apparently quite a good IDS.. And don't forget you've also got
the traditonal unix tools like tcpdump.

There are also tools that will allow you to do things like sniffing over
a switch (ettercap, dsniff).

Basically if you're prepared to not have such an intergrated solution
as a dedicated sniffer box would give you (which it sounds like you are)
then Linux can provide it..