ETAP-2003 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit Network TAP

When I started doing my research for network taps I was surprised at the expense. It seemed that many products were over $500. What was I missing? It seemed like such a small thing to do, just like the old hubs. For my application, I needed a passive tap because it was going to be used to feed a network intrusion detection system (NIDS). Sure, I could have mirrored a port on my cisco switches, but I didn't want to lose any packets. The Dualcomm Gigabit Network TAP's price point made the purchase a no-brainer when comparing other products. When I received the product it was extremely simple to setup. No software configuration necessary. A simple passthrough from ports 1 to 2 with port mirroring on port 5. It doesn't get any easier than that. The system has been working great and has been successfully transmitting packets to my NIDS. I've already detected several worms on my internal workstations. It is hard to put a price on that. I recommend the product and don't have any complaints.

Déçu

Works great!

Not bad

... I think the last time I was this excited about a network device I was 13 years old and my mom got me a 2400 baud modem for my birthday. The unit works exactly as described, it mirrors port 1 to port 5, leaving the remaining 3 ports as regular switched ethernet ports (though port 2 is also the PoE passthrough, which I haven't had the chance to test to that extent). It couldn't be more straight forward than it is. The USB power is fairly cool, I can imagine it being very practical when you're near a server rack trying to sort stuff out. Right now I'm actually using an iphone wall socket to power the unit since my router and switch is rather far away from my workstations. Works just fine. But I see a soldering iron in my future if/when that cable breaks (still beats scavenging ebay for a compatible power supply, waiting for it to be delivered, etc). The manual is...well...a single page that describes the device. There is no setup instructions or common scenarios, nothing. And that's ok, this isn't for the uninitiated anyway. If you can't figure out how to connect a switch tap you'll never get wireshark display filters to work for you anyway... 5 star for price, features, ease of use and I could ding them for the manual, but I won't. It's fine the way it is.