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Network Management and Monitoring Guide
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{ "lLangCode": "en", "lName": "English", "lCountryCode": "us", "transcode": "en_US" }
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On-Box Packet Sniffer Overview

date_range 24-Feb-25

A packet sniffer also known as a packet analyzer or network analyzer that is used to monitor and analyze network traffic over ports without using an external device, such as collector or agent.

On-box packet sniffer allows you to monitor IPv4 packets on ingress or egress ports. It matches packets that are based on header attributes, like source IP, destination IP, source MAC, destination MAC, VLAN, and VNID. You can store the sniffed packets in pcap format.

The following configuration statements are used to support this feature:

  • To enable the tracing operations, configure the set services pfe traffic traceoptions file filename statement.

  • To increase the default timer that is set for uninstalling the filter and deleting the entries, configure the set services pfe traffic monitor-timer time statement.

  • To enable egress packet monitoring, configure the set interface interface-name ether-options loopback statement. You must configure an additional unused interface for a virtual loopback interface to achieve egress packet monitoring.

Use the command monitor pfe traffic interface to monitor data packets and verify the functionality of on-box packet sniffing.

Benefits of On-Box Packet Sniffer

  • This feature reduces costs by eliminating the need for an external device, such as collector or agent and simplifies the debugging process.

Limitations

Limitations of on-box packet sniffing include the following:

  • Monitoring of host-generated packets is not supported.

  • Monitoring of ipv6 packets is not supported.

  • You need to clean up the pcap files manually once the monitoring activity is done.

  • For monitoring of the packets on aggregated Ethernet interfaces, you should assign its child interface for packet sniffing.

  • It is mandatory to configure unused interface in the setup as a loopback interface and provide that interface as value for egress interface argument in the CLI to achieve egress monitoring.

  • Need to provide at least one of the attributes in the CLI to start the packet monitoring.

  • Monitoring on IFL interfaces is not supported.

  • Interface range is not supported.

  • Monitoring on IRB is not supported.

  • Matching on priority VLAN is not supported.

  • Only 32 bits of inner source MAC or destination MAC address is matched with the CLI. The byte-offset option in the CLI command monitor pfe traffic interface helps in matching the 32 bits of the address.

  • Concurrent capture sessions are not supported.

  • Monitoring on outer header source MAC and its combinations are not supported on QFX5110.

  • When providing the IPv4 address in the CLI, the prefix is not supported.

  • Filter is configured for either Layer 2 or Layer 3 attributes, but not for both.

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