Port Monitoring; Configuring A Port Monitoring Session - Alcatel OmniSwitch 6600 Family Network Configuration Manual

Port Monitoring

Port Monitoring
An essential tool of the network engineer is a network packet capture device. A packet capture device is
usually a PC-based computer, such as the Sniffer
ing data traffic of a network. Understanding data flow in a VLAN-based switch presents unique chal-
lenges primarily because traffic takes place inside the switch, especially on dedicated devices.
The port monitoring feature allows you to examine packets to and from a specific Ethernet port. Port
monitoring has the following features:
Software commands to enable and display captured port data.
•
Captures data in Network General
•
A file called pmonitor.enc is created when you configure and enable a port monitoring session.
•
Data packets time stamped.
•
One port monitored at a time.
•
RAM-based file system.
•
Statistics gathering and display.
•
The port monitoring feature also has the following restrictions:
You cannot configure port mirroring and monitoring on the same switching ASIC. OmniSwitch 6624,
•
6600-P24, 6600-U24, and 6602-24 switches contain one switching ASIC. On OmniSwitch 6648
switches ports 1 through 24 and 49 and 50 are on one switching ASIC while ports 25 through 48 and
51 and 52 are on another switching ASIC. On OmniSwitch 6602-48 switches ports 1 through 24 and 49
and 50 are on one switching ASIC while ports 25 through 48 are on another switching ASIC.
The maximum number of monitoring session is limited one per chassis and/or stack.
•
Only the first 64 bytes of the traffic will be captured.
•
Link Aggregation ports can not be monitored.
•
You can select to dump real-time packets to a file. Once a file is captured, you can FTP it to a Sniffer or
PC for viewing.

Configuring a Port Monitoring Session

To configure a port monitoring session use the
monitoring followed by the user-specified session ID number, source, the slot number of the port to be
monitored, a slash (/), and the port number of the port.
For example, to configure port monitoring session 6 on port 2/3 enter:
-> port monitoring 6 source 2/3
Note. One port monitoring session can be configured per chassis or stack.
page 27-20
®
, that provides a means for understanding and measur-
®
file format.
port monitoring source
OmniSwitch 6600 Family Network Configuration Guide
Diagnosing Switch Problems
command by entering port
April 2006