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Compatible Network Cards
- Thread starter UKMan
- Start date
Are you looking for a PCM/CIA or Cardbus card for a notebook or rather, is it a PCI card for a standard PC?
I use a Xircom PCM/CIA card in my Dell and run Sniffer including v4.7 just fine.
The deal with the "enhanced drivers" that Sniffer offers for the Adaptec and a limited number of other cards (BTW, NAI charges $500 for these cards!), is this:
the enhanced drivers are supposed to allow the card to capture Layer 1 and Layer 2 errors such as runts, fragments and CRC errors. ANY card that is compatible with NDIS drviers will work with Sniffer in promiscuous mode.
More significant.... guess what? If you'[re connecting to the SPAN or mirror port of a switched hub (as most of us are), the "enhanced drivers" buy you nothing - nada. BY design, SPAN and mirror ports discard Layer 1 and Layer 2 errors at the switch port level rather than sendign them across the backplane with the other traffic that is copied for a SPAN session. This improves switch performance, the designer's notion being "who needs to look at bad packets anyway?". Using a Cisco Works, HP Openview or (if you can get it to work properly) Sniffer's "Switch Expert" is an easy way to see what errors existed on the switch port.
Owen O'Neill
Datacom Systems Inc.
Northeastern SE
I use a Xircom PCM/CIA card in my Dell and run Sniffer including v4.7 just fine.
The deal with the "enhanced drivers" that Sniffer offers for the Adaptec and a limited number of other cards (BTW, NAI charges $500 for these cards!), is this:
the enhanced drivers are supposed to allow the card to capture Layer 1 and Layer 2 errors such as runts, fragments and CRC errors. ANY card that is compatible with NDIS drviers will work with Sniffer in promiscuous mode.
More significant.... guess what? If you'[re connecting to the SPAN or mirror port of a switched hub (as most of us are), the "enhanced drivers" buy you nothing - nada. BY design, SPAN and mirror ports discard Layer 1 and Layer 2 errors at the switch port level rather than sendign them across the backplane with the other traffic that is copied for a SPAN session. This improves switch performance, the designer's notion being "who needs to look at bad packets anyway?". Using a Cisco Works, HP Openview or (if you can get it to work properly) Sniffer's "Switch Expert" is an easy way to see what errors existed on the switch port.
Owen O'Neill
Datacom Systems Inc.
Northeastern SE
- Thread starter
- #3
You could nose around among the online used hardware vendors and look for a used PII series Distributed Sniffer - just make sure it has the NIC. When NAI does "depot upgrades" by offering credit to useres who trade in old DS Pro servers, I'm guessing that the boxes which are returned are just stripped of the Sniffer software and sold off in bulk or sent to salvage folks.
Another possibility is to contact Steel Cloud at - they manufacture the current DS pro appliances and back when they were known as Dunn Computers back they also manufactured one out of the two Sniffer Windows based hardware appliances that were in putty colored cases (I don't recall who made the other one - it was prior to their Dunn relationship). It's conceivable that they may have or know of a stash or overstock location where the Adaptec 6200XX cards could be obtained.
Hope this helps.
Owen O'Neill
Datacom Systems Inc.
Northeastern SE
Another possibility is to contact Steel Cloud at - they manufacture the current DS pro appliances and back when they were known as Dunn Computers back they also manufactured one out of the two Sniffer Windows based hardware appliances that were in putty colored cases (I don't recall who made the other one - it was prior to their Dunn relationship). It's conceivable that they may have or know of a stash or overstock location where the Adaptec 6200XX cards could be obtained.
Hope this helps.
Owen O'Neill
Datacom Systems Inc.
Northeastern SE
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