Monitoring Traffic Between Two Computers

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1

This section explains how to monitor network traffic between two computers to troubleshoot network problems.

When troubleshooting network problems, you may need to create a capture of network traffic between two specific computers that are separated by one or more routers. In this case, you may want to analyze all network traffic between the first computer and its nearest router, and all network traffic between the second computer and its nearest router. Most of the time this analysis determines whether network packets are being lost or corrupted somewhere between the routers.

To make these traces consistent and to be able to read these traces simultaneously, the system clocks must be synchronized between the two computers before making the trace.

In addition, it is important to understand that most Exchange network traffic is RPC packets traveling between the clients and the server, as well as LDAP calls to the global catalogs. You should investigate any other high network utilization that does not fit this profile.

To use address pairs in a capture filter, first build an address database. For more information about creating an address database, see How to Create an Address Database in Network Monitor. After building this address database, you can use the addresses listed in the database to specify address pairs in a capture filter.

For More Information

For more information about how to monitor traffic between two computers, see How to Monitor Network Traffic Between Two Computers Using Network Monitor.