Re: Traffic monitoring in small office

[Marty <martyb@ix.netcom.com>]

rocky wrote:
>  Hey,
>
> In my office, we have 11 computers. We have 2 2M broad band accounts
> from our ISP. We use a router combines 2 income cable and use 2 8
> ports switches to make every computer have the Internet access. The
> problem is right now we got very unstable Internet access. Therefore,
> I'm thinking of instead of directly connect 2 switches to router, I
> connect 1 Debian box(has 2 NIC) to the router and then distribute the
> Internet access to all 11 PCs through a 16 port switch which is
> connected to the Debian system. In this way I can install traffic
> monitoring application s on Debian box to analyze the problems. Can
> any of you tell me whether this is a good way to do it please? If it
> is what are the applications I should put in Debian box? If it is not
> a good way, what is your suggestions please?
>
> Thanks a lotï¼?
>
> Blessings,
> Rocky

The routing "application" is linux (iptables), with several specific IP and 
netfilter drivers/modules.  The easy way is to just throw in all the networking 
relates ones, since they don't take up much memory unless you are using an old 
PC as your router/firwall, as I do.

There are several applications to configure iptables, a popular choice being 
shorewall, although for initial setup guarddog/guidedog might be a little easier 
to use.  There are several Debian network monitoring applications, e.g., iptraf 
and tcpdump.