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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:10 am Post subject: replacing my hub

i have a system, or two ....

cable modem, smoothwall, hub, switch, computers

the hub is an old 10-base-t hub, because it hubs.
i have one of my computers on the hub with network monitoring software so i can see what each computer is doing, just in case.

but the old hub is not xbox live compatible.
the xbox won't connect.

so i bypass the hub, and the xbox is happy.
but now my monitoring software is no more.

i need a hub solution to getting the monitoring computers nic into promiscuous mode
so a recent xbox live comptibale hub, i suppose
ecept that most "hubs' these days are switches and that won't work for monitoring all traffic.

my idea is, would two nics in the computer do it ?
bridge the two networks .... sort of
except that i would then have a physical bridge between the smoothwall and the switch. but the idea is a goer ... sort of
not sure win2k will do the bridge
if i conver the bridge computer to linux it might work, but i doubt the monitor software does linux, checking .... nup. all windows on the download page.

switch mirror-ing ?

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:53 am Post subject:

linux has plenty of monitoring tools built in to most distros... and yes... that should work... if internet connection sharing is stable enough to last.

I know linux can do the job... set it up as a router and snoop all traffic on the nic connected to the switch.

Guide Dog Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 8419 Location: MN

Slymer wrote:
linux has plenty of monitoring tools built in to most distros... and yes... that should work... if internet connection sharing is stable enough to last.

I know linux can do the job... set it up as a router and snoop all traffic on the nic connected to the switch.

Of course with that solution your only seeing the traffic between the internet and your computers, not nessicarially the traffic between computers. though if you don't have any wireless, then it isn't horribly likely that you need to worry about intruders doing anything internally.

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:48 am Post subject:

I don't see any need for a hub when there are things like Ettercap.
http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/

You could just build a network tap. You can buy all the parts at Radio Shack to do that.

Toilet Drinker Joined: 22 May 2003 Posts: 297 Location: ND

or buy a switch and mac flood it so that it acts like a hub. Wink

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:49 am Post subject: Re: replacing my hub

Dave Rave wrote:

my idea is, would two nics in the computer do it ?
bridge the two networks .... sort of
except that i would then have a physical bridge between the smoothwall and the switch. but the idea is a goer ... sort of
not sure win2k will do the bridge

Win2k will do it, but I dunno if it will do it out of the box. Here at the office we have a win2k server with 2 nics that runs Microsoft ISA Firewall server which does this. It actually pulls 3 IPs from our cable modem and binds them to the outside nic, then the inside NIC connects to 2 24 port switches to route out to the various PCs in the office. It has monitoring and all that built into the ISA software, nice thing is that rules can be applied on an IP or network login name criteria. IE, Joe Smith can login to any computer in the office and if I have port forward rules setup under his name then requests will be forwarded to whatever computer he is on at the time. That sort of thing.

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:47 am Post subject: Re: replacing my hub

GibsonSG wrote:
Dave Rave wrote:

my idea is, would two nics in the computer do it ?
bridge the two networks .... sort of
except that i would then have a physical bridge between the smoothwall and the switch. but the idea is a goer ... sort of
not sure win2k will do the bridge

Win2k will do it, but I dunno if it will do it out of the box. Here at the office we have a win2k server with 2 nics that runs Microsoft ISA Firewall server which does this. It actually pulls 3 IPs from our cable modem and binds them to the outside nic, then the inside NIC connects to 2 24 port switches to route out to the various PCs in the office. It has monitoring and all that built into the ISA software, nice thing is that rules can be applied on an IP or network login name criteria. IE, Joe Smith can login to any computer in the office and if I have port forward rules setup under his name then requests will be forwarded to whatever computer he is on at the time. That sort of thing.

hmm, ta
i think the main point is
win2k server
lucky for me i have a copy i might use .....
but yeh, instead of hanging the computer off of the hub, i think i want to put in in-line instead of the hub
on;y troubles i can see
it needs to be some sort of transparent
so the other computers still talk to the smoothwall for dhcp