Let's talk about Distance Sniffing/Remote Visibility

[CARL.P.HIRSCH () sargentlundy com]

I'd like to hear from the list as to what your preferred means of
determining what the hell is going on at a packet level at the other side
of a WAN/MAN/frame/etc link.

It seems to me that the means available are A) a very expensive distributed
NAI Sniffer installation B) standard RMON probes and the NMS of your choice
and C) A linux box with a ton of interfaces running Ethereal accessed via
Xwindows/VNC/whatever.

Personally, I'm inclined to explore option C. The bells & whistles of a
commercial package like NAI's Distributed Sniffer are not really a
compelling value added to me. It's a shame there's no Open Source RMON
agent available.

I'm asking NANOG because I figure this is something pretty much every
network engineer bumps into at one time or another.

thanks,
-carl