Due to the limitations of the Sniffer Pro application in analyzing WAN-related issues, it would be difficult or nearly impossible to truly analyze your WAN s performance with the Sniffer Pro application. For this reason, this section is a short one. Sniffer Pro is LAN locked, if you will. This section of the chapter shows you what you can do with the Sniffer Pro in regard to analyzing RIP and what you can do to help yourself find more information if you want to analyze your network performance as it extends off the LAN into the WAN arena.

RIP is one of the most commonly used and encountered dynamic distance vector routing protocols. One of the most common reasons for analyzing RIP (and IPX RIP) on your LAN is that most server-based operating systems support it. In other words, if you have a server with two or more NICs installed in it, you could conceivably create a router with it. For security and speed purposes, you might not want to do that, but if you need a simple way to connect two or more segments in a hurry, you can. Now you might be asking, Why learn this, then? The reason is that you, the network analyst, will most certainly be confronted with two things: LANs that have these server/routers in use and RIP packets in your trace files, which you might see while analyzing performance on the network segment.

RIP is a LAN performance nightmare.