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Monitoring Network Access
Understanding networking concepts is a more advanced concept for most system administrators, but it is essential to being successful. In this activity, the we will use the netcat (`nc`) utility to generate network traffic between two servers and view that traffic's appearance in a tool called `iptraf-ng`.

Lab Info
Table of Contents
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Challenge
Install Client Utilities
We've got to install the two packages that the team will use to generate and monitor traffic. Let's use YUM to get it done:
[root@server1]# yum install iptraf-ng nc
Repeat this on the other server:
[root@server2]# yum install iptraf-ng nc
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Challenge
Create the Traffic Log File
On the first server, let's run
iptraf-ng
and go underConfigure...
In the menu, don't forget this isn't a menu we control with a mouse -- it's all keyboard. Make sureLogging
is toggled toOn
. Set the log file path to:home/cloud_user/traffic_log.txt
. Then go into IP traffic monitor. In the next menu, select ens5. Once we press Enter the logging will start.Listen for Traffic
Let's open a second terminal into
server1
and runsudo su
right off. Once we're there, we're going to start netcat listening on post 2525 with this:[root@server1]# nc -l 2525
Send Some Traffic
Now, let's start talking. Back in the
server2
window we've got open, send netcat traffic toserver1
with this (wherex.x.x.x
is the internal IP ofserver1
that we'll see on the hands-on lab overview page):[root@server2]# nc x.x.x.x 2525
We'll just land at a blinking cursor below the prompt, but we can type a message there and press Enter. Once we do, it will show up back in the window we're listening in on
server1
. A bunch of messages sent fromserver2
would look like this:[root@server2]# nc x.x.x.x 2525 test test testing This is a test
On
server1
, they would look like this when they arrive:[root@server1]# nc -l 2525 test test testing This is a test
That should be enough traffic for what we're doing. On
server2
, press Ctrl + C to kill thenc
command we've got running and flip back over to the terminal we were runningiptraf-ng
in. Press x to stop the monitoring and get out, then choose Exit from the main menu.Examine the Log
On
server1
, if we runls /home/cloud_user
we should seetraffic_log.txt
listed in the output. Read that to see if it was capturing what we need:[root@server1]# less /home/cloud_user/traffic_log.txt
We should see some log entries showing traffic going from
server2
toserver1
on port 2525.
About the author
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