[Trinux-talk] building a high-performance monitoring system

[Mike P. <MPi...@lg...>]

Hello All,

I'm just getting started with Trinux and have two intended purposes 
for it:  One, to run on older laptops in my IDF closets.  These will
run minicom for console access, as well as give me the ability to 
log in for remote monitoring, as needed.  The second is to build a 
few high-performance monitoring stations that can be used on our 
core switches.  Does anyone have any recommendations for building 
and spec'ing a high-perfomance network monitoring system?  I did 
some quick searches on Tom's Hardware Guide and HardwareCentral.
They are mainly focused on home & wireless networking (although I
did find an interesting article on Tom's HG about laptop NICs:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/20011210/index.html).  

If I were to buy the boxes right now, I'd probably either get a 
few cheap Dells and install a gigabit card (or 2) in it, or buy the 
separate components (case, motherboard, CPU, HD, CD/floppy, lots of 
RAM, and 2 or 3 network cards--one or all gigabit.)  I guess my 
primary question is, what network cards are best for capturing a
lot of frames?  I'll probably look primarily for SC fiber cards
since that's what we currently have capacity for.  But I will also
want to install a 100/1000 copper card for later use as we install
more copper gig.

So, if anyone has researched the latest & greatest and could either 
give me advice or point me to some good websites on the subject, I
really appreciate it!

Take care, Mike