I have an Oracle Solaris server on which a network interface is reporting input errors.  A case was opened with Oracle and they indicated that the nature of the noted input errors indicate the NIC dropped a packet that was either too large or too small probably based on NIC MTU size.  Their recommendation to trace the source of these packets were switch port mirroring or an inline packet sniffer.  We tried switch port mirroring and connected a laptop to the mirrored port and ran wireshark to capture packets but nothing turned up as unusal.  The theory is that the laptop's NIC would also drop those packets and hence would not make it to the software level where wireshark operates. As for a packet sniffer.  They were unable to provide me more detailed information on what his is and how it works.  The basic idea I was able to obtain from a networking colleague is that it is a physical device with an in port, an out port and some sort if monitoring port. This would bridge the connection from the switch to the server. My question is can anyone recommend a model / make of an inline sniffer and how to use it to identify the source of the bad packets going to the server?  Keeping in mind the theory that any sort of capturing by a PC may drop packets at NIC level, can this inline sniffer actually capture packets itself? Any help will be greatly appreciated. ... View more