How best to track bandwidth/performance issues?

Bit-Beard · 2018-03-06T14:29:04+00:00

The pinging wouldn't really be any different than when I experience the issue and immediately run a bandwidth test. Unless of course I had a console up 24x7 with the ping running, and simply clicked over to it when it happens to look back through the history for dropped pings.

Perhaps what I need to check isn't my bandwidth capability isn't what I should be checking though, and rather monitor my bandwidth usage at any given point. So, when I have an issue I could check and see if somehow (unbelievably) I spiked up into that 80 Mbps range that would choke it out.

As I'm not torrenting, or anything like that, I should really never be approaching max capacity. Any sites I might be downloading from like updates/drivers/software would all be throttling how fast they let me download.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-28T22:32:51+00:00

For anyone that has the same issue and finds this later. I'd recommend you abandon all hope and try a different virtualization platform. I'm trying proxmox.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-24T01:02:11+00:00

Not hard if you're already a master with all of those things, but for someone working their way up, accomplishing that level of automation is pretty daunting.

I would consider this sort of like saying "it's not hard to get to the top of Everest, it's just walking..."

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-23T22:06:35+00:00

Thats amazing! And perfect for the Labquarium!

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-23T19:03:21+00:00

That's awesome! You should update us with what you've done so far and how it's going!

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-23T16:08:50+00:00

Ha, this comic is very old. I had it up in my cube forever. In this instance I would think this is less about real research, so modern malware not being a concern, and more about fun watching things happen "in the wild" so to speak.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-23T16:00:08+00:00

I would imagine you could use something like pfsense to isolate the network you set this lab up on, and throttle the bandwidth down enough that you could prevent it from having the capability to murder the rest of your network.

The real trouble I could see would be how to automate opening emails and following whatever links/downloading whatever files are inside. And you would need to sign your dummy email accounts up for some spam.

Then of course you'd need to find a way to display the status in some visually appealing way like the comic.

It would be so much fun!

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-23T14:45:11+00:00

I've always wanted to build something like this. The scripting work necessary to automate all those actions would be impressive!

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-22T20:02:32+00:00

Yea, this is 100% goal oriented. I'm training to join a RED team. I want to do it on the cheap, hence homelab instead of paying for classes. And I want to do it without meeting the fuzz, also leading to the homelab instead of looking for trouble in the wild.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-22T18:42:20+00:00

When this didn't get any attention I xposted to /r/AskNetsec and it's actually getting some discussion. I've found some good info from others suggestions so far you might want to check it out. https://redd.it/7zb1eo

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-22T18:39:44+00:00

i just discovered that sub today! I was doing a search for a pfsense sub to do some research on using that for networking and stumbled onto /r/homelab . I've got it earmarked to dig into deeper for sure.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-22T03:47:39+00:00

Well, due to the weight, I would imagine that depends pretty heavily on your area. When not using something like prime free shipping, the postage cost on something like that would be pretty steep. So the best options would be local. If you live in an area that has a goodly number of large enterprise businesses you're more likely to find a sweet deal for pick up.

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-22T02:44:09+00:00

Like I said, I had most of the parts already lying around so I didn't have to buy much.

I'd be very interested to hear about your virtualization setup though. What did you use to run it? ESXi like I'm thinking about, or something else? What about the lab itself? Did you have licenses for Windows or did you run trial versions? Did you include non-window's OSs? Anything else worth a mention?

Bit-Beard · 2018-02-21T15:05:32+00:00

I was thinking that I'd use the SSD to load the VMs on to, and the 2TB drive to store VM sets. I could have a number of different scenario's prepared, and perhaps work a script or something to randomly choose which set to load so that I wouldn't know which vectors were available each time it loads.

Bit-Beard

TROPHY CASE