EtherScout is a passive agent which sits on your network and collects data on traffic patterns of Internet usage. Reports can be generated in real-time, showing detailed information on what users are doing, or trends of surfing behavior on your network.

After installing EtherScout, the program will start monitoring all packets traveling through the physical network cable it is connected to. It can monitor all packets, even if they are not directed to the EtherScout PC.

After collecting this information, EtherScout reports can immediately show you:

Web sites that users have recently been viewing.

Most commonly visited web sites on your network.

Network traffic generated per day, week or month by each user.

Levels of traffic each protocol is generating and by whom.

Plus! You can write your own reports using HTML and SQL, allowing you to extract the exact information you need to see.

Installation
EtherScout must be installed on Windows 2000 or XP. The program requires around 16 MB of free memory and 20 MB of free disk space for the programs files and the database. The product will monitor traffic on your network generated by any operating system, including Linux and other versions of Windows.

It is very important where you install EtherScout on your network. The machine should be connected to the network cable which has the most Internet traffic flowing through it. If it is connected to a switch, it may not be able to see traffic between other workstations (unless you enable port-mirroring). It is better to install it on either on your Internet gateway server, or as close to it as possible, so that it can see all relevant traffic.