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Importance of Network Monitoring A LearnsSecurityOnline.com Article

http://www.learnsecurityonline.com © Learn Security Online, Inc. 2004-2005

Contents

Introduction Ethernet Internet Protocol TCP,UDP and ICMP Tcpdump Basics Ethereal Dsniff Snort and IDS Fundamentals Putting it together

Introduction ------------

Reading network traffic is essential for system administrators, network engineers, and security analysts. At some point there will be a need to read the network traffic directly instead of monitoring application level details. Examples of situations that might require monitoring network traffic are, auditing network security, debugging network configurations, and analyzing usage patterns. For this task we use network monitoring software, or network sniffers, that sniff the traffic your computer is able to see on the network. What exactly your computer can see really depends on how the network is laid out, but the easiest way to figure out what it can see is just start sniffing.

The most common tools to do the job are readily available. Many are even free to download and use.

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