Specifications

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Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and Cisco 7600 Series Router Network Analysis Module Installation and Configuration Note
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Chapter 1 Overview
Understanding How the NAM Works
This section describes how the Catalyst 6500 series switch, Catalyst 6000 series switch, or Cisco 7600
series router Network Analysis Module (NAM) operates. This section contains these subsections:
• Understanding How the NAM Uses SPAN, page 1-4
• Understanding How the NAM Uses VACLs, page 1-4
• Understanding How the NAM Uses NDE, page 1-5
The NAM monitors and analyzes network traffic using remote monitoring (RMON), RMON extensions
for switched networks (SMON), and other management information bases (MIBs). For more
information, see the “Supported MIB Objects” section on page 5-15.
The NAM monitors, analyzes, and views NetFlow on remote devices and supports these RMON groups:
• RMON groups defined in RFC 2819
• RMON2 groups defined in RFC 2021
• DSMON groups defined in RFC 3287
• High Capacity RMON groups defined in RFC 3273 (except the media Independent Group)
• SMON groups defined in RFC 2613
• All groups defined in the Application Response Time MIB
The NAM can also monitor individual Ethernet VLANs, which allows it to serve as an extension to the
basic RMON support provided by the Catalyst 6500 series supervisor engine.
You can use any other IETF-compliant RMON application to access link, host, protocol, and
response-time statistics for capacity planning, departmental accounting, and real-time application
protocol monitoring. You also can use filters and capture buffers to troubleshoot the network.
The NAM can analyze Ethernet VLAN traffic from the following sources:
• Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, trunk port, or Fast EtherChannel SPAN or RSPAN source
port.
For more information about SPAN and RSPAN, refer to the “Configuring SPAN and RSPAN”
chapter in the Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Software Configuration Guide.
• NetFlow Data Export (NDE).
For more information about NDE, refer to the Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Software Configuration
Guide.
Table 1-1 summarizes the traffic sources that are used for NAM monitoring.
Table 1-1 Summary of Traffic Sources for NAM Monitoring
Traffic Source LAN WAN
Ports VLANs Ports VLANs
VACL capture Yes Yes Yes N/A
NetFlow Data Export NDE (local) Yes Yes Yes Yes
NetFlow Data Export NDE (remote) Yes Yes Yes Yes
SPAN Yes Yes No No