So while I have been troubleshooting my SIP trunks issue this last week, I have been introduced to wireshark. I was wondering if people have used something different. Primarily some type of scanning software that will just let me packet capture by IP address. The wireshark is a pain because we have to take down the system, install a hub, and plug into one of the vacant ports to capture the traffic. The hub is old and might be causing some issues itself. It would be most handy to have some type of setup for now and future to just monitor traffic on an IP address, or install a ethernet switch with our systems that would allow us to monitor by port.

Get a switch that has port mirroring.

suggestions on a brand or model?

Most business class swithces support SPAN (cisco term) or port mirroring as described. You likely will not find this in any consumer grade stuff. Any of the Adtran Netvanta, Cisco Catalyst, HP Procurve will give you this functionality though most decent managed switch lines from most manufacturers offer this feature.

I use in the office a DLINK POE switch that has it and it works well.

the netgear prosafe switches have it...

What about running Wireshark on the Asterisk box itself? Wireshark is just the latest version of Ethereal and there should be versions for both *nix and Windows.

Let me add that you could capture the packets and transfer the capture file to a Windows machien to view them in Wireshark.