Efficient use of workstations for passive monitoring of local area networks

ABSTRACT

Effective management of a local area network (LAN) requires not only a protocol to manage the active entities, but also a means to monitor the LAN channel. This is especially true in shared-channel LANs, such as Ethernet, where the behavior of the LAN as a whole may be impractical to deduce from the states of the individual hosts. Passive monitoring can be done using either a dedicated system or a general-purpose system. Dedicated monitors have been favored for several reasons, but recent workstations, when carefully programmed, are sufficiently powerful to serve this function. Using a workstation offers high-performance graphics and a more flexible environment for collecting and presenting LAN behavior.

REFERENCES

• 1: Andrew Bechtolsheim, The SUN workstation architecture, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1982
• 2: David Boggs, John Shoch, Edward Taft, Robert Metcalfe. Pup: An lnternetwork Architecture. Technical Report CSL-79-10, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, July, 1979.
• 3: R. T. Braden, A pseudo-machine for packet monitoring and statistics, Symposium proceedings on Communications architectures and protocols, p.200-209, August 16-18, 1988, Stanford, California, United States
• 4: Robert T. Braden and Annette L. DeSchon. NNStat: lnternet Statistics Collection Package -- Introduction and User Guide Release 2.3 edition, USC / Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA, 1989.
• 5: David R. Cheriton. The V Kernel: A software base for distributed systems. IEEE Software 1 (2): 19-42, April, 1984.
• 6: Peter Eades. A heuristic for graph drawing. Congressus Numerantium 42:149-160, 1984.
• 7: C. Esposito. Graph Graphics: Theory and Practice. Comput. Math. Applic. 15(4):247-253, 1988.
• 8: LANWatch User' s Guide Version 1.2 edition, FTP Software, Inc., Cambridge, MA, 1988.
• 9: B. L. Hitson, Knowledge-based monitoring and control: an approach to understanding behavior of TCP/IP network protocols, Symposium proceedings on Communications architectures and protocols, p.210-221, August 16-18, 1988, Stanford, California, United States
• 10: V. Jacobson, Congestion avoidance and control, Symposium proceedings on Communications architectures and protocols, p.314-329, August 16-18, 1988, Stanford, California, United States
• 11: Van Jacobson, Craig Leres, and Steve McCanne. tcpdump (manual page) Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 1988.
• 12: T. Kamada , S. Kawai, An algorithm for drawing general undirected graphs, Information Processing Letters, v.31 n.1, p.7-15, April 1989 [doi>10.1016/0020-0190(89)90102-6]
• 13: Gerry Kane. MIPS R2000 RISC Architecture. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1987.
• 14: Robert M. Metcalfe , David R. Boggs, Ethernet: distributed packet switching for local computer networks, Communications of the ACM, v.19 n.7, p.395-404, July 1976 [doi>10.1145/360248.360253]
• 15: J. Mogul , R. Rashid , M. Accetta, The packer filter: an efficient mechanism for user-level network code, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM Symposium on Operating systems principles, p.39-51, November 08-11, 1987, Austin, Texas, United States
• 16: John F. Shoch , Jon A. Hupp, Measured performance of an Ethernet local network, Communications of the ACM, v.23 n.12, p.711-721, Dec. 1980 [doi>10.1145/359038.359044]
• 17: Michael D. Schroeder, Andrew D. Birrell, Michael Burrows, Hal Murray, Roger M. Needham, Thomas L. Rodeheffer, Edwin H. Satterthwaite, and Charles P. Thacker. Autonet: a High-speed, Self-configuring Local Area Network Using Point-to-point Links. Research Report 59, Digital Equipment Corporation Systems Research Center, April, 1990.
• 18: SunOS Reference Manual Revision A edition, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA, 1988. Part #800-1751-10.
• 19: C.P. Thacker, E. M. McCreight, B. W. Lampson, R. F. Sproull, and D. R. Boggs. Alto: A personal computer. In D. P. Siewiorek, C. G. Bell, and A. Newell (editor), Computer Structures: Principles and Examples, pages 549-572. McGraw-Hill, 1982. Also CSL-79-11, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
• 20: Songnian Zhou. EtherTap. Source code. 1989

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.4 INPUT/OUTPUT AND DATA COMMUNICATIONS
      B.4.2 Input/Output Devices
          Subjects: Data terminals and printers

  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Network communications
          Nouns: Ethernet

General Terms:
Design, Performance