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Help find collisions with Etherpeek 1
- Thread starter lukpcn
- Start date
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1
- #2
Sniffing collisions on an Ethernet is a tricky thing. The first thing you need to look at is the Network Interface Card you have in the computer that you are using for analysis. If this is an off the shelf NDIS card, you will not be able to detect collisions.
For a card to report collisions, it must be able to both detect and report on the Jam signal that is sent out as a result of the collision. Most NDIS cards may detect this signal, but none of them report it.
The old DOS Sniffer used to do a good job of detecting collisions, but as revisions were made to the software, the detection got worse. The tool we have found to be the most reliable for measuring true collisions is the Fluke LANMeter, or the Fluke OneTouch. Both of these have circuitry in them for detecting collisions.
If you suspect that these collisions are having an impact on your network throughput, the best and cheapest tool to test it is QCheck from NetIQ. This tools allows you to put a software "endpoint" on a computer at each end of the connection. You then used the QCheck application to measure the throughput between the two devices. If the throughput is good, collisions are not your problem.
If you do find a way to measure collisions, ie Fluke tools, I would start breaking things up into different collision domains if your collisions go over 5% of overall packets.
Either way, I would certainly check out
For a card to report collisions, it must be able to both detect and report on the Jam signal that is sent out as a result of the collision. Most NDIS cards may detect this signal, but none of them report it.
The old DOS Sniffer used to do a good job of detecting collisions, but as revisions were made to the software, the detection got worse. The tool we have found to be the most reliable for measuring true collisions is the Fluke LANMeter, or the Fluke OneTouch. Both of these have circuitry in them for detecting collisions.
If you suspect that these collisions are having an impact on your network throughput, the best and cheapest tool to test it is QCheck from NetIQ. This tools allows you to put a software "endpoint" on a computer at each end of the connection. You then used the QCheck application to measure the throughput between the two devices. If the throughput is good, collisions are not your problem.
If you do find a way to measure collisions, ie Fluke tools, I would start breaking things up into different collision domains if your collisions go over 5% of overall packets.
Either way, I would certainly check out
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