Design and Implementation of an Ethernet Frame Analyzer for High Speed Networks
Jean Paul Talledo Vilela · 2005
We present a portable Ethernet frame analyzer for monitoring and managing IEEE 802.3 Ethernet - Fast Ethernet - networks. The system is based on an 8 bit high performance microcontroller and one Fast Ethernet controller interface which supports 10 and 100 Mbps. The equipment is meant to capture all the circulating Ethernet packets in a network and make tasks such as traffic analysis, network statistics, network utilization, and traffic generation. The results of every task can be visualized in two modes: by a liquid crystal screen (LCD); by a terminal using a serial connection to the personal computer. The portable system has a built-in matrix keyboard to configure and select the desired tasks; also, the system has a serial port to connect to a personal computer to visualize in more detail the results of every task. The system can be programmed using the JTAG interface for future updates of the portable system. Finally, the system has programmed a small TCP/IP stack for future enhancements like visualization using Web-browser or Telnet applications.