Where to place packet sniffer?

I am looking to load up a packet sniffer onto a spacre desktop I have and place it before my router so I can monitor all packets. We have had a problem w/ our router locking up and I want to see what happens right before this occurs ( and narrow it down to a workstation). Here is the problem, and what I think is a possible solution but I want to see if you guys know of a better way to do this.



Our setup is like this:



Modem -> Router - > Switch (about 15 computers on it)



Now obviously I cannot hook up the sniffer to the switch since, I would not see all packets. I need to put it before the switch between the switch and the router. Is my best bet to use a non switched hub to connect my router, switch, and sniffer pc?



I know there will be some performance loss as it is a non switched hub but there will only be 3 devices hooked up so it shouldn't make for too much loss. My other solution is to not put a hub in at all, and write/modify managed c# to repeat all incoming/outgoing ethernet packets after I install 2 NIC's in the desktop and put it inline and in between the switch and router? This method may actually require 3 NIC's if I would like to assign the sniffer desktop an IP for RDP.

 

:blink:

And what part of that did I understand?

Thats way over my league lol.