Quoting Jack Malone
Can somone tell what I need to have installed on suse linux machine so that I can maybe monitor an analize some of the traffic on my network. I'm wanting to see if I can determine what is causing so much traffic on the lan at times that it makes things crawl. I know there is some software on the dvd/cd to do this just not sure what it is. If know what it is I do not mind going an reading the man pages to see if i can get it going or a good how-to on the subject either. A good recommendation on a good firewall book / howto would be nice to have also.
tcpdump - grabs selected network traffic and displays it in semi-intelligible fashion. ethereal - GUI interface to tcpdump. gkrellm - Windowmaker dockapp (works with Blackbox also) to monitor system, including network load (read/write lights plus graph). lsof - lists open files, including network connection, including program that opened it. netstat - lists open network ports including program name. mrtg & RDD - graphs loads, including network. see also: Intro to setting up SuSEfirewall2: http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=8989/ur0408c/ Monitoring network traffic on Internet connection: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6985 (If you are trying to monitor an 10/100Base-T network with a switch, it can be difficult to see all traffic.) HTH, Jeffrey