I use a D-link DI-713P router at home. I wanted to monitor the data coming from my cable modem (or tap it). Is there any way I can mirror or "span" (similar to Cisco switches) this information onto another port? The other port is connected to an IDS unit which needs to monitor all the traffic coming in and going out of the router. One solution is that I could place a hub before the router and connect the cable-modem's link to the hub and a link from the hub to the IDS and then connect the hub to the router. But I was hoping for something more efficient. Any ideas?

if you want to "monitor" the traffic, use a packet sniffer, ethereal is a good one.

Rick, I would like to use Ethereal for packet decoding (infact I have a very capable commercial appliance equipped with full-fleshed IDS capability - signature detection + anomaly detection and lots more). I also have a full-duplex tap, which is unsuited for this purpose, since I want to monitor just a HDX link. The issue that I have is that my router is not a Cisco switch, wherein you can route traffic from any combination of ports out to another port - for instance, all the information coming from ports 1 to 12 (corresponding to a certain subnet) should be forwarded to port 14 and port 14 can then plug into the IDS. With a hub, its even simpler - all ports get a copy of every transmitted packet. In my case, I have 4 ports on this router, port 1 is where my cable modem goes. I have 4 laptops and 2 PCs setup, all of which but one (port 2) use wireless. Now, if I wanted to monitor all the traffic that goes in and out of my house, I would have to tap the cable modem's connection. The easiest way to do this is using a hub - as I described earlier - rather than directly connecting the Cable modem to the router, insert a hub between the two. Essentially, I need to connect the modem's link to the hub and the hub to the router. Then any one of the available ports in the hub can be connected to the IDS unit. *However*, I do not have a hub with me at the moment. If D-Link only provided more information on this on its website (it provides a good amount, but not sufficient enough to do stuff like this), it would greatly simplify my task. I was just wondering if anyone ever came across a similar problem and hence posted it on this forum. Thanks for trying to help out.