Mailing List Archive

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Kouser Izhar wrote:

> Dear Sir / Madam,
>
>
>
> 1 - Please let me know if Ethereal can be used for other switches . for
> example, Brocade, McData, Connectrix.

You can capture from any port on a switch on the device on that port if
Ethereal runs on it.

If perchance, you mean capturing all packets that go through the switch,
you will have to set up port mirroring/monitoring/spanning on the switch
to have packets from some or all other ports sent out a specific port.

Unless one of the vendors has done the work, Ethereal does not run on a
switch.

Most likely, in any case, you will not want to use Ethereal to capture
data at the sort of high data rates to be expected from a switch's monitor
port. Use tethereal or tcpdump or whatever.

> 2 - Can we use this software with Compaq/ ATL Library, ATTO / NSR /
> bridges, Emulex / Compaq HBA adapters?

You can use Ethereal to look at any of the protocols listed as supported.
Apart from that, your question seems badly posed.

> 3 - Which port is used to capture traces on the switch?

Whichever port you want to use. See your switch vendor's documentation on
port mirroring/monitoring/spanning.

Regards
-----
Richard Sharpe, rsharpe[at]ns.aus.com, rsharpe[at]samba.org,
sharpe[at]ethereal.com, http://www.richardsharpe.com

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 10:07:03AM -0500, Kouser Izhar wrote:
> 1 - Please let me know if Ethereal can be used for other switches . for
> example, Brocade, McData, Connectrix.

Ethereal doesn't support capturing Fibre Channel traffic except for
FC-over-IP.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 09:23:00AM -0800, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Kouser Izhar wrote:
> > 1 - Please let me know if Ethereal can be used for other switches . for
> > example, Brocade, McData, Connectrix.
>
> You can capture from any port on a switch on the device on that port if
> Ethereal runs on it.

Unfortunately, as the first two of those are Fibre Channel switches
(which leads me to suspect the third is), there's a good chance that
Ethereal *doesn't* run on it, unless there's a Fibre Channel HBA that
runs as a network interface and that's supported by the OS he's using.
That's a possibility - but it probably means the only traffic that
Ethereal will capture is IP-over-Fibre Channel; it probably won't be
able to see, for example, any SCSI-over-FC (FCP) traffic.