Resolved Configuration of modem, hub, router, clients

Hello all,
I am new to networking and trying to learn as much as I can on my own at the moment. I will also begin my pursuit of a A.A.S. degree in Networking Technology come this spring of 2016.

My goal is to learn and understand network information with the aid of Wireshark and also keep an eye on my two teenagers and their browsing habits. I have somewhat of an idea regarding the hardware yet I am unsure the best way to implement it, hook it all up.

What we have in the house is a cable modem to a Belkin AC1600 router, 3-4 PCs that are wired and wireless (usually stay plugged into the CAT5E), two smart phones and two tablets. I have recently purchased a Linksys EtherFast EFAH05W 5-port hub with a uplink port.

How do I configure/connect the modem, hub and router to capture traffic on all devices; wired and wireless without any issues?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thx

 

Define capturing traffic.. Since you are interested in network technology, you might wanna look at how switches stop switching loops. Maybe you wanna see ARP requests from the router. Maybe you wanna see, routing protocols in action--- EIGRP or OSPF. I would purchase some good inexpensive Cisco gear and learn how to configure them. A router and a switch, that you can manage and configure yourself can be had for $50-75--maybe even cheaper. You can attach it to your existing network, and wireshark in and watch traffic flows--or maybe how switches (hubs ****) stop layer two loops by watching Spanning Tree in action

good luck

 

What I want to capture is everything, minus what I filter in Wireshark.
The way I understand it, because a switch routes packets on layer 2 to a specific address, I'd need a switch w/ port mirroring to my machine and they seem to be more of the commercial hardware and are not cheap. Since I hub is basically a layer 1 repeater, it would seem that I could put it between the router (also my WAP) and the cable modem and have all packets from clients (kids) distributed to my machine as well. Will this hub also allow promsicuous mode?

 

Lots of issues with the above. A switch is layer 2 and a router is layer 3. Routers route packets on layer 3. A switch does "Frames" on layer 2. Your frame is basically your mac address. When they arrive at the local LAN, (which more or less is your inner network) the packet header is stripped off and the layer 2 MAC address is examined to see if your machine is where the frame goes. go to youtube and google some basic networking info--you'll get a better idea on traffic flows

 

Thanks elca

 

Basic traffic flows: Install wireshark on your ethernet machine. start it up and select the network interface card that is active. Now ping one of the machines on your lan--or ping the router and watch wireshark describe the traffic. Or just it run. And you'll see stuff like the router broadcasting "Who is 192.168.1.102?" That's called an ARP (address resolution protocol ) request--looking for the hardware address of a specific machine with a specific layer 3 (IP) address

good luck

 

Got it. Thanks