Information About Span; Span Sources; Characteristics Of Source Ports - Cisco Nexus 3548 Configuration Manual

Information About SPAN

Information About SPAN

The Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) feature (sometimes called port mirroring or port monitoring) selects
network traffic for analysis by a network analyzer. The network analyzer can be a Cisco SwitchProbe or other
Remote Monitoring (RMON) probes.

SPAN Sources

SPAN sources refer to the interfaces from which traffic can be monitored. The Cisco Nexus device supports
Ethernet, port channels, and VLANs as SPAN sources. With VLANs, all supported interfaces in the specified
VLAN are included as SPAN sources. You can choose the SPAN traffic in the ingress direction, the egress
direction, or both directions for Ethernet source interfaces:
• Ingress source (Rx)—Traffic entering the device through this source port is copied to the SPAN destination
• Egress source (Tx)—Traffic exiting the device through this source port is copied to the SPAN destination

Characteristics of Source Ports

A source port, also called a monitored port, is a switched interface that you monitor for network traffic analysis.
The switch supports any number of ingress source ports (up to the maximum number of available ports on
the switch) and any number of source VLANs.
A source port has these characteristics:
• Can be of Ethernet, port channel, or VLAN port type.
• Cannot be a destination port.
• Can be configured with a direction (ingress, egress, or both) to monitor. For VLAN sources, the monitored
• Can be in the same or different VLANs.
• If some of the FEX ports are being used by a SPAN session as source ports, the remaining FEX ports
Note
• The maximum number of source ports per SPAN session is 128 ports.
• The maximum number of SPAN sessions supported on the Nexus 5000 Series and Nexus 5500 Series
• The maximum number of SPAN sessions supported on the Nexus 5600 Series and Nexus 6000 Series
Cisco Nexus 3548 Switch NX-OS System Management Configuration Guide, Release 6.x
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port.
port.
direction can only be ingress and applies to all physical ports in the group. The RX/TX option is not
available for VLAN SPAN sessions.
cannot be a part of a different SPAN session.
switches is 4.
switches is 16.
Configuring SPAN