There was a point when I was doing a lot of packet capturing. 10/100/1000 is pretty easy. 10Gbps good luck, and let me know the best way for that. Any ways, there are multiple ways to capture packets. The most obvious is a port mirror on a managed network switch. Sometimes though, you don’t have that luxury. So you have to have a network tap. A network tap is basically a “hub”. For those who remember the days of hubs, you know why switches are better. Hubs are notorious for collisions and most hubs even had a collision light that would tell you when there was a collision, but you would already know, because your 1990’s network ceased to function. Back to the taps. Below is a tap that I have used in various situations. Like from a cable modem to a router or some sort of internet connection to a router. There are many packet capture programs and analyzers out there. Check out Wireshark, Colasoft Capsa, also Riverbeds SteelCentral Packet Analyzer. Riverbeds is cool because it is a standalone analyzer. Just open a pcap and filter through its many functions. Start taking control of your network today!
