Bruce: One approach might be to build yourself some low cost servers with
dual NICs, install ethereal on them, connect them to key points in your
network(like your core switch/router locations), either span the segment of
interest to one of the server's NICs on that same switch, or barring that,
directly connect the server's NIC to the segment of interest. Then, from
any remote device on your network(your desktop), you could x-windows(VNC,
whatever) to the remote server, fire up ethereal, and away you go. Of
course, if you don't have spanning capability on your switches, you could
just connect the "monitor" NIC in your "ethereal server" to the segment of
interest, then proceed as before, but this obviously doesn't scale too well.
If the goal is keeping it low cost, refurbished 1U servers running Linux and
Ethereal might be an option.
Rick Martin
Boeing Space & Communications