How can I identify a problem during a specific time of day for a specific class?

Products

• PacketShaper

Issue/Introduction

There's a problem with Oracle between 2 and 3 am each day. How can I drill down to discover what's going on with this application?

Resolution

If you noticed a problem around a specific time of day for a specific class, but you do not have the resources to wait until the problem occurs again, use the packet capture and command scheduling features to schedule a packet capture to run during the problem time.

See Create a Schedule in PacketGuide for instructions on using the command scheduling feature. To learn about packet capture, see Sniff Without a Sniffer.

Example

You want to capture packets for the Oracle class (Inbound and Outbound) between 2 and 3 am.

1. Create a command file named pkton.cmd with the following commands:
   
   packetcapture add inbound/oracle
   packetcapture add outbound/oracle
   packetcapture on
2. Create a command file named pktoff.cmd with these commands:
   
   packetcapture remove inbound/oracle
   packetcapture remove outbound/oracle
   packetcapture off
3. Schedule the pkton.cmd file to run at 2am.
4. Schedule the pktoff.cmd file to run at 3am.

PacketWise writes the log file to disk in tcpdump format and puts it in the 9.258/pktlog directory.

1. Download the log file to the computer running third-party network analyzer software such as EtherPeek or Ethereal.
2. Open your log file with your analyzer software.