BYTE.com > Features > 2006
Turn an Old Laptop Into a Portable Network-Troubleshooting System
By David S. Markowitz
October 9, 2006
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Many system builders find themselves doing double-duty as network administrators for their customers. Even if the system builder isn't formally the admin, they're often the person who installed and set up the network. So it's only natural that the customer relies on them when the network experiences problems.
But troubleshooting a network when you're not constantly on-site can be difficult, especially when the problems are intermittent (as they frequently are). One alternative is to temporarily connect a machine to the customer's network, then let the machine gather data for a day or two. This often is enough to help you pinpoint the root cause of network issue. This system can also help you taking proactive steps to audit a network for performance and security issues, so these issues can be addressed before they become major problems.
In this article, I'll show you how to build such a network-monitoring system, and without busting your budget. In fact, all you'll need is an old laptop, the FreeBSD operating system, and some open-source software that is included with the FreeBSD package. Your total cost could be as little as a few hours of your time.
Ingredients
Here's a list of the hardware and software you'll need to turn that old laptop into a portable network-troubleshooting system:
Hardware: Since you won't be doing any heavy-duty computation, hardware requirements for a laptop-based portable network monitoring station are modest. A good starting point would be a laptop with the following specifications:
- 500 MHz Pentium III CPU
- 256 MB of RAM
- 10-GB hard drive
- 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet card
The main reason for going with a faster CPU is the ability to use tools with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Running modern GUIs on slower machines can be frustrating.
More specifically, here's the system I used for this article. It's a low-end Dell Latitude CPiA with the following specs as a proof of concept:
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