[CentOS] What about port mirroring? (Was: Switch to measure traffic at IP level)

Hello everyone:

I was just reading an ntop guide and it mentioned many switches have port mirroring.

According to what I am reading, the Cisco I am using will copy all traffic to the mirror port. Then, I can monitor what is going on from there.

That seems like a good way to do this.

Are there any pitfalls with this approach?

Would ntop be a good tool for it?

I would like to graph total bytes in and out as well as 95% usage on an IP address level. I would like daily, weekly, and monthly graphs.

Thanks, Neil

-- Neil Aggarwal, (281)846-8957, www.JAMMConsulting.com Will your e-commerce site go offline if you have a DB server failure, fiber cut, flood, fire, or other disaster? If so, ask about our geographically redundant database system.