Chris Zagar <zagarat_private> wrote: >> Ok, heres a very simple solution: Buy a switch. > >Actually, switches do help, but they also run the risk of people actually >believing that their switched connections are private, lulling you into a >false sense of security. [Description of port monitoring facilities deleted] And quite apart from the documented and intentional port monitoring facilities, the switch may leak packets. I have a number of systems attached via switch ports to our backbone (for traffic purposes). Last year I took some traffic samples from a machine connected to one brand of switch. I recently repeated the test with a different brand of switch. In both cases, there were about 2 packets per second (around 2% of the segment traffic) that were unicast, and not intended for the machine that received them. Moral: Don't rely on your switch for security. Peter -- Peter Jeremy (VK2PJ) peter.jeremyat_private Alcatel Australia Limited 41 Mandible St Phone: +61 2 9690 5019 ALEXANDRIA NSW 2015 Fax: +61 2 9690 5247
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 14:19:41 PDT