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Passive monitoring unlike active monitoring does not inject traffic into the network or modify the traffic that is already on the network. Also unlike active monitoring, passive monitoring collects information about only one point in the network that is being measured rather than between two endpoints as active monitoring measures. Figure 5 shows the setup of a passive monitoring system where the monitor is placed on a single link between two endpoints and monitors traffic as it passes along the link.
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Figure 5: Passive Monitoring Setup
Passive measurements deal with information such as: Traffic and protocol mixes Accurate bit or packet rates Packet timing and inter-arrival timing
Passive monitoring can be achieved with the assistance of any packet sniffing program.
Although passive monitoring does not have the overhead that active monitoring has, it has its own set of downfalls. [UnivPenn02] With passive monitoring, measurements can only be analyzed off-line and not as they are collected. This creates another problem with processing the huge data sets that are collected.
As one can see passive monitoring my be better than active monitoring in that overhead data is not added into the network but post-processing time can take a large amount of time. This is why a combination of the two monitoring methods seems to be the route to go.
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