Purpose of Traffic Analysis

Traffic analysis can be accomplished using the Remote Network Monitor (RMON) family of Management Information Base (MIB) modules. However, MIB-based monitoring provides a limited view of network activity. To augment MIB-based monitoring, frames can be captured and analyzed. By analyzing captured frames, traffic patterns can be discerned at all layers of the OSI Reference Model, and application data can be inspected to reveal each application's behavioral patterns. In this respect, traffic analysis is closely related to protocol decoding. Whereas a protocol decoder breaks down frames field-by-field at all layers of the OSI Reference Model for troubleshooting purposes, a traffic analyzer inspects frame headers and payloads to identify trends and generate detailed performance statistics. Additionally, traffic analyzers often have built-in reporting capabilities to display compiled data in useful formats. Both protocol decoding and traffic analysis begin by capturing traffic. For this reason, many of the products that support protocol decoding also support traffic analysis.