<network engineer hat>
I think a better adaptation of the concept would be to categorize the type of packets, and associate them with certain sounds. That way, you can *listen* for http requests/response packets, you can *listen* for ftp and you can *listen* for database activity. For example. Why would you want to do that? Well, networks being crowded as they are, sometimes it is sufficient to know the *amount* of activity. Traditional sniffers have you looking and poring over packet activity logs which is well, plain boring and time consuming.
</network engineer hat>

Calvin