[ Thanks to Duane
for this link. ]
When you’re paying for bandwidth, you want to make sure that
it’s efficiently used — which is why tools like dsniff are so
valuable. In this tutorial, Duane Dunston explains how to implement
dsniff and why it’s important to monitor network traffic:
This is a practical step by step guide showing how to
use Dsniff, MRTG, IP Flow Meter, Tcpdump, NTOP, and Ngrep, and
others. It also provides a discussion of how and why we should
monitor network traffic.
In order to properly understand how your network
operates and to debug any problems with network congestion, and
other network issues, network monitoring is essential. It helps to
quickly find out if your local network is having a problem, a
particular host, or if some hosts are using up an excessive amount
of bandwidth. It can also be used to just provide a historical
analysis of how the network is being used.