Chapter 3: About Probe Instances; Introducing Probes - Network Instruments GigaStor User Manual

Chapter 3: About Probe Instances

Introducing Probes

As a network administrator, when something goes wrong on your network, seeing what is happening on the
wire can quickly lead you to a solution. Use this guide to assist you with choosing, deploying, configuring, and
using your probes. The probes, along with the Observer analyzer software, let you see all traffic on the network
to which it is connected. To monitor multiple networks from a single analyzer, probes must be installed at every
point where network visibility is required.
Probes collect and report network traffic and statistics (usually from a switch) to an Observer analyzer. This
enables you to detect and anticipate problems on both local and remote portions of the network. Probes gain
insight and visibility into every part of the network, access remote networks as easily as local networks, eliminate
the time and expense of traveling to remote sites, and speed troubleshooting.
A probe is a hardware device on your network running Network Instruments probe instance software. Each
hardware probe has at least one probe instance that captures packets from your network to analyze. The probe
hardware device could be an appliance purchased from Network Instruments or you could install the probe
software on your own hardware.
The probe can be located on the same system as the analyzer (every Observer analyzer includes a "local probe"),
or the probe can communicate with remote analyzers over TCP/IP.
Probes monitor the following topologies:
10/100 Mb, 1/10/40 Gb Ethernet (half- and full-duplex)
Wireless ( 802.11 a/b/g/n)
Figure 4 (page 18) shows how probes provide visibility into your network. It may be obvious, but it also
shows that you cannot see traffic on portions of your network where you do not have a probe. Finally, you can
put the Observer analyzer anywhere on your network so long as it has TCP connectivity to the probe.
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