00:04
Now, our next device that we're gonna talk about is gonna be our protocol analyzer. Now, we're gonna talk about a protocol analyzer software a little bit more in depth in a next module. But right now we're gonna talk about a protocol analyzer device. Now, essentially, a protocol analyzer is a device that we can plug into our network
00:21
that let's just listen to some network traffic and listen to what's going on.
00:25
This will allows us to analyze our network, see if we're having any network issues because of certain packets that are on our network or if see if there's anyone out there who's maybe trying to do some computer scanning or support scanning our protocol analyzer. Let us take a look at all of that.
00:40
Now. Our protocol analyzer can be as simple as a laptop with some wire shark software installed on it. Or it can be as complex as a standalone protocol analyzer device that we plug one end of a network backbone cable into, and then the other end of the network backbone cable into
00:57
and then track the date of this going between and watch the packets and watch all the frames
01:02
So our protocol analyzer again is going to be a device that allows us to take a look, see what type of packets are going on our network, see what type of traffic is going on on our network. And essentially, it's almost like being able to take our switch or take a wire, open it up, look inside and see what type of stuff is going on in there. So
01:19
it's a great tool tohave and even if it's just a simple is a laptop with a network interface card
01:23
in a wire shark program installed on it. We can use that as our our protocol analyzer. And again we'll take a look and talk a little bit more about some protocol analyzer software in another module.
01:37
And then we have our loop back put plug now are looped back. Plug is a device that can look just something just like this. Uh, this is an R J 45 Ethernet loop back plug, and what a loop back plug does is it takes our send cables. So the cables that we have corresponding with sending information
01:55
and it loops them back to this received
01:57
ports. Now what this does is this allows us to actually take the take data and use special software with our loop back plug to verify that our network interface card dysfunction functioning properly. If we're sending certain data packets over our sin, our sin cables,
02:15
looping them back around and then getting data through our receive cables,
02:20
the data should be exactly the same there. We don't even have any much room for electromagnetic interference. So we have special software that will install use with our loop back plug and make sure that those packets are the same and that there isn't any corruption or there isn't any issues with our network interface card. So a loop back plug just another tool to throw in your tool kit
02:39
and use. If we're having some issues with some network connectivity,
02:44
and we want to test and see if it's the network interface card that might have be having issues, we can pull out our loop back plug, pull out our software and make sure that our connections are properly sending and receiving through our network interface card.
