Network Monitoring PC

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lostgunman

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Jul 16, 2004
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Ok, we are building a Pc to monitor multiple ports on Cisco hardware. Our only issue so far is trying to be sure it adds very little latency to the network ports we are monitoring.

We have never done this before.

We need a system that has 5+ gig network ports in it. I have found a couple that may work (byo systems), and our network admin keeps pushing high end stuff when I do not think it is needed.

The plan was to keep it cheap...but really good. I was using newegg to find the parts. I figured I needed a motherboard that had Athlon X2 ability, SATA II and 2 on board gig NICs to start. (still looking for a good one)

I would then need the ability to cram 3+ other gig cards into it. (wanting as many as possible).

First, can PCI really provide enough UMPH to push gig? Second, has anyone used more than 2 NICs in a system before (higher the better) and if so how well did they perform? I know PCI Express has the push to do gig, but I can't find many boards with a lot of PCI x1 slots, and all I can find for PCI Express gig cards is a D-Link (want a better vendor). Next, is it possible to use the x16 slots on a motherboard (normally for video) for x1 network cards? Then, does someone know where to find PCI Express multi-port gig cards?

thanks for any help.
 
lostgunman said:
Ok, we are building a Pc to monitor multiple ports on Cisco hardware. Our only issue so far is trying to be sure it adds very little latency to the network ports we are monitoring.

We have never done this before.

We need a system that has 5+ gig network ports in it. I have found a couple that may work (byo systems), and our network admin keeps pushing high end stuff when I do not think it is needed.

The plan was to keep it cheap...but really good. I was using newegg to find the parts. I figured I needed a motherboard that had Athlon X2 ability, SATA II and 2 on board gig NICs to start. (still looking for a good one)

I would then need the ability to cram 3+ other gig cards into it. (wanting as many as possible).

First, can PCI really provide enough UMPH to push gig? Second, has anyone used more than 2 NICs in a system before (higher the better) and if so how well did they perform? I know PCI Express has the push to do gig, but I can't find many boards with a lot of PCI x1 slots, and all I can find for PCI Express gig cards is a D-Link (want a better vendor). Next, is it possible to use the x16 slots on a motherboard (normally for video) for x1 network cards? Then, does someone know where to find PCI Express multi-port gig cards?

thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

If you use SNMP and poll every minuite then it should be very low overhead. (typicaly)

PCI will be your bottleneck if it's a 32bit card (Standard PCI card) Heres a good read on the subject It shows charts on how well they will perform. Typicaly at %25-%30 of rated speed on a 32bit slot.

The above reason is why you should probably buy a server with 64bit 66Mhz slots and get 64bit 66Mhz Gigabit cards.

If all you are doing is SNMP monitoring then Gigabit may be overkill.

Can you give a little more detail as to the size of your network and what type of monitoring you want/need to do?

Theres a reason why he wants to buy " High End" hardware. It's beacuse he wants it to work.
 
We are going to be spanning gig ports and getting netflow statistics off of the Cisco Switches. possible 250 SNMP devices being monitored also.

We are looking at all options. And were originally looking at PCI Express gig cards...but any suggestions are helpful. PCI 64 bit would be our final choice if PCI Express can't be done...mainly because of choices...
 
You don't need to span jack squat to use Netflow. Just configure the router or switch to export the netflow data to your collector, and call it a day. Netflow data is very small.

Total for all devices
NetFlow Data Received 58499 export(s), 1599082 flow record(s), 79.89 MB data
Traffic Described 61.887 GB


80mb of netflow data to describe 62 gigabytes of traffic.
 
Fint said:
You don't need to span jack squat to use Netflow. Just configure the router or switch to export the netflow data to your collector, and call it a day. Netflow data is very small.

Total for all devices
NetFlow Data Received 58499 export(s), 1599082 flow record(s), 79.89 MB data
Traffic Described 61.887 GB


80mb of netflow data to describe 62 gigabytes of traffic.
Click to expand...

Netflow will be included, we will be doing packet sniffing and SNMP also.
 
moetop said:
Well for PCI express you can get IBM adapters I too would be weary of Dlink

The most Pci express slots I have seen on a board is 3 It looks like you may have to go with a combination of pci Express and pci-x (64bit pci) to get what you want. :(

As to wheather a 1x card will work in a 16x slot. Reference here "A PCI express card is upward compatible, so a 1x card will fit in any card slot, a 4x card will fit into an 8 or 16x port and so on."
Click to expand...

We found a good motherboard...what does anyone know about these cards:
http://store.yahoo.com/bestselectionsunlimited/f29201.html

It's a PCI Express 4x dual Gig Server Adapter. I can actually put 3 of these on this MB we found (DFI) and with the Dual-Gig on board we would have 8 Gig ports...
 
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