Exploring the Sniffer Pro Interface

and toolbars Sniffer Pro offers. In learning how to use this interface, the chapter focuses on the navigation of the product. Sniffer Pro is a graphical user interface (GUI) network analyzer that includes a DHTML-based Dashboard. The Sniffer Pro Dashboard consists of gauges that display utilization and error statistics, a Detail tab that displays a tabular view with detailed statistics on network utilization, size distribution, and errors, topology-specific tabs that display tabular views with detailed statistics, and customizable graphs that show network utilization, errors, and size distribution. The Detailed Errors section provides a breakdown of the errors that are shown on the errors-per-second dial. These errors include CRCs, runts, oversizes, fragments, jabbers, alignment errors, and collisions. Sniffer Pro provides monitor applications that run in promiscuous mode to gather statistical information from the network and calculate and display these statistics in real time. The monitor applications do not require data capture. The software also provides a number of additional tools that aid in troubleshooting, such as Packet Generator, the Address Book, the ping, Trace Route, DNS lookup finger, and Who Is utilities. The Sniffer Pro Expert analyzes data in real time to find objects, symptoms, and diagnoses on the network.