Network management and control of large broadband local area networks, where the number of nodes ranges from several hundred to a few thousand, is a very important concern for today's network manager. This primarily involves tuning the network to ensure load balance over the broadband subchannels, and the capability to monitor specific nodes for accounting, performance and security purposes. This thesis presents the design considerations for a session level passive hardware monitor on a broadband local area network having a bus/tree topology. A methodology for session monitoring is presented based on the issues discussed. The session service provided is packet switched with point to point virtual circuit connection. Current technology and economics dictate the use of broadband transmission media for large local area networks spread out over a radius of around ten kilometers. This medium provides adequate throughput for a large number of devices by supporting frequency division multiplexing and a multiple access medium access control protocol. The design considerations include both hardware and software aspects and are justified based on the characteristics of the transmission medium and communication protocol architecture used in this study. The local area network used for the development of this project is a sixteen hundred node campus network at Virginia Tech (™LocalNet 20) supplied by SYTEK, Inc. / M.S.