Hi, I’m looking at the dumb switches from TPLink, Netgear, Cisco etc - is there any way I could make them broadcast all packets that they are receiving?

The use case is that I want to mirror my WAN traffic without port-mirroring on the router. I was thinking that if I could just plug the incoming WAN connection into a switch, and then (if the switch could broadcast all traffic), take one port to the firewall, and the other port to a dedicated device for analysis.

Can this be done without having to change settings on my router/WAN connection?

Thanks!

  • @09874444
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    21 year ago

    That usually is one use case for port-mirroring. If you don’t want to use it, you can buy a hub somewhere for cheap.

    • @MigratingtoLemmyOP
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      11 year ago

      Hi, I would definitely like to purchase a hub: but they don’t seem to be readily available online? I can’t seem to find a “hub” on Amazon, all of them are dumb switches

      • @09874444
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        11 year ago

        Indeed, vendors stopped using the word Ethernet Hub. Keep in mind that Hubs were mostly 10Mbit, 100Mbit were rare. Would that be enough for you? I don’t have a Hub model to suggest you, sorry. If speed is an issue, I would suggest reviews for some smart/unmanaged switches (<$25) might show options to convert it to Hub. Let’s see if others use one and reply ;)

        • @MigratingtoLemmyOP
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          11 year ago

          Thank you, I have not received any comments yet. Pity that I cannot convert the small 5-port TPLink/Netgear switches into hubs, would have been great. Thanks for your help