hondarice
07-22-2001, 12:58 AM
Allow me to give you a general understanding of the environment.
We've got a leased t1 running with a cisco 2600 which then runs to a 24 port switch.
Fiber is run to a dozen different buildings which each have centralized hub rooms with their own 24 port hubs which then hit client workstations.
The t1 is shared by approximately 75 users at the moment and that is the extent of the network. There is no inter-network file/print sharing, and no necessary communication between any of the users.
On a temporary basis there is an NT box broadcasting as a dhcp server with no network traffic monitoring tools being used.
I am looking for a cost effective solution to dhcp, bandwidth monitoring/packet monitoring (general abuse monitoring), and perhaps firewalling to prohibit inbound traffic.
Currently I have setup a linux machine running dhcpd and it seems to work very well. I am by no means an experienced nix sysadmin so I am not familiar with utilities and programs which may be useful in meeting our needs.
What, if anything, would you recommend I use for network monitoring if my main concerns are bandwidth abuse and internal data restriction? For example if the linux dhcp server were implemented I would want the ability to tell how much bandwidth each IP address was consuming.
And is linux the best alternative here? I am very pleased with how easy dhcp was to configure and how fast it is, and the next step is coupling some sort of sniffer of monitoring program to help maintain a coherent network.
And I also like things which are free.. which is why the NT server is temporary.
I'd appreciate any advice here.. I am also not sure whether or not the server should reside between the router and the primary switch. Currently the NT box is broadcasting with a single eth card connected to the switch because it is not being utilized for any traffic control.
Thanks
hondarice
ps, posted this on network forum as well but nobody was responding there.
We've got a leased t1 running with a cisco 2600 which then runs to a 24 port switch.
Fiber is run to a dozen different buildings which each have centralized hub rooms with their own 24 port hubs which then hit client workstations.
The t1 is shared by approximately 75 users at the moment and that is the extent of the network. There is no inter-network file/print sharing, and no necessary communication between any of the users.
On a temporary basis there is an NT box broadcasting as a dhcp server with no network traffic monitoring tools being used.
I am looking for a cost effective solution to dhcp, bandwidth monitoring/packet monitoring (general abuse monitoring), and perhaps firewalling to prohibit inbound traffic.
Currently I have setup a linux machine running dhcpd and it seems to work very well. I am by no means an experienced nix sysadmin so I am not familiar with utilities and programs which may be useful in meeting our needs.
What, if anything, would you recommend I use for network monitoring if my main concerns are bandwidth abuse and internal data restriction? For example if the linux dhcp server were implemented I would want the ability to tell how much bandwidth each IP address was consuming.
And is linux the best alternative here? I am very pleased with how easy dhcp was to configure and how fast it is, and the next step is coupling some sort of sniffer of monitoring program to help maintain a coherent network.
And I also like things which are free.. which is why the NT server is temporary.
I'd appreciate any advice here.. I am also not sure whether or not the server should reside between the router and the primary switch. Currently the NT box is broadcasting with a single eth card connected to the switch because it is not being utilized for any traffic control.
Thanks
hondarice
ps, posted this on network forum as well but nobody was responding there.