A Network Monitoring Application (Net Monitor)

Abstract

The applications, which are based on network, have become critical for any business. The downtime of a network becomes even more costly. The network slow-down, loss of bandwidth, network congestion and packet loss can easily translate into hundreds of thousands of rupees in lost revenue and productivity. To make sure round-the-clock availability of network for users, network administrators need proven solutions that detect and resolve bottlenecks before they become problems. This project ts to make a program that puts the Ethernet hardware (NIC) into promiscuous mode (receive all frames mode). Putting a NIC in this mode is useless unless there is software to receive a copy of all the frames on the network and process them to get the required statistics for the network administrators, which would help them improve the performance of existing network or design a new network for optimum performance. The software called "Net Monitor" was developed to put the NIC in the promiscuous mode. The frames received are decoded and processed in order to get useful information and statistics. The contents of network traffic are displayed so that the network administrator can figure out what is going on and take appropriate measures accordingly. This information will also determine operational efficiency of the network and the performance can thus be optimized through better design.