goodhead Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 I'm looking for some free software that will allow me to scan my network for devices and then it plot the topology in a diagram. There are tools that you can get that just allows you to draw your network manually. I want it to pick up all our hp switches and show that they link to a core switch. Any one come accross any think out there???? Dan
tech_guy Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 Blimey if there is such a thing out there I want it too - I had to do my last network schematics in Visio and it took ages!
jojen Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 3COM have a bit of software that will map your network for you that's free called Network Supervisor. 3COM Network Supervisor download You can use it without registering, but the registration is free if a little confusing. Give it an IP range and it will find all the network devices on it and map them out for you.
tech_guy Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 Well I've got it installing now on my test setup.
tech_guy Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 It's a bit basic in terms of the graphics used to create the map but the great thing is you can call up the mac address of any station and it also shows the stress it's under on the network.
tech_guy Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 Just tried but for some reason the box showing the remote desktop comes out black when I do a screen grab. Just going to try a different program. No, just tried ScreenHunter and still getting a black box where the 3Com window is.
m25man Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 I'm looking for some free software that will allow me to scan my network for devices and then it plot the topology in a diagram. Dan Can I also have next weeks winning lottery numbers, a Ferrari and wake up to find my wife has turned into Kelly Brook!
tech_guy Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 I'm looking for some free software that will allow me to scan my network for devices and then it plot the topology in a diagram. Dan Can I also have next weeks winning lottery numbers, a Ferrari and wake up to find my wife has turned into Kelly Brook! Oh, I got all those last week.
m25man Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 The 3Com Software works best with 3Com Switches, in fact to get it free you used to have to register a 3Com Switch not sure if that still applies. HP's software does a reasonable job with HP's but similarly fails to detect others as anything more than a cluster of nodes. In order to create a meaningful diagram automatically you need switches with a common discovery protocol (HP & Cisco fell out a couple of years ago and stopped supporting each others), the cheaper manufacturers do not have any at all (they don't want to pay license fees to use them) your SNMP needs to be enabled, the community strings must all be the same and preferably the same version of snmp needs to be used. The sofware needs to understand all of the MIB's of ALL of the switch manufacturers so that the mac tables can be extracted and the inter-connects calculated. Most of the more sucessful commercial products such as LanSurveyor rely on good SNMP and agents installed on nodes attached to each switch in order to work out how each switch is connected together and which nodes connect to which switch. The closest to the Utopia requested in this thread under the FREE label has already been posted elswhere on Edugeek - http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude.php It still has problems finding everything, however it's the best that I have seen for less than the £1200 that LanSurveyor want.
Oops_my_bad Posted October 13, 2007 Posted October 13, 2007 Here's a screengrab of the 3COM software: Wow - I wish my topology was that simple
tech_guy Posted October 14, 2007 Posted October 14, 2007 ROFL - it's my home test setup. Wish things were that simple at work too! The software didn't pick up my switch which is strange because it's a 3com!?
tech_guy Posted October 15, 2007 Posted October 15, 2007 I just discovered I need the update for it to recognise my switch.
OutLawTorn Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 http://www.spiceworks.com/ Not sure how much it does to map network hardware, but it does other infrastructure....
enjay Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 I've tried The Dude and 3Com Net Supervisor, and didn't really rate either to be honest - they were rather hit and miss as to which switches they did and didn't see (even with identical models of switches) and both failed to return station names, just IP addresses. It did raise a slight smile when 3Com identified our FRDC as a "print server" though - I think it's a little more than that! Fluke used to do something called LAN Mapshot which is free, but needs Visio - don't know if its still around, but it was good when I used it a few years ago.
m25man Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 Fluke used to do something called LAN Mapshot which is free, but needs Visio - don't know if its still around, but it was good when I used it a few years ago. I used to use this all the time, it was included with Visio Pro 2000 and I had it working with Visio 2003 but alas the same story as soon as Cisco and HP fell out over the use of CDP it all went pear shaped as all of the later switches stopped being discovered. Vista killed it off completely as did Vista kill almost all of my other favourite tools. Now I have to have two laptops all the time. My old XP diagnostics portable is equipped with, Proxim Orinoco Gold A/B/G PCMCI Card (Atheros) Airmagnet Fluke Lan Mapshot + Visio 2003 Solarwinds Engineers Edition Omnipeek Lanhound Ethereal (Wireshark) In Linux we use NAGIOS and Auditor http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-livecdsec/ If there was a free topology mapping tool that works I would be using it! What I do now is by using an assortment of tools (mostly Solarwinds SNMP based) draw a basic topology map. Using SNMP examine the switch ports to find out what Mac addresses reside upstream of each uplink. These normally decode easily, so in a few hours you can normally have a pretty good picture of things. So if anyone fancies writing software to do this you need to ping sweep an IP block, Discover and identify all switches with an SNMP tool and MIB Walker, match all the MAC/IP's to the various ports and plot a theoretical diagram, how easy must that be! Oh and do it all for free!
m25man Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 I put spiceworks on a VM, it's quite funky for an SNMP/Monitoring tool but it's Adware! Watching whats going back and forth to the spiceworks server I would be a bit wary of using it on any of my installations. Oh and it doesn't have any mapping functions anyway.
richard.thomas Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 I put spiceworks on a VM, it's quite funky for an SNMP/Monitoring tool but it's Adware! Watching whats going back and forth to the spiceworks server I would be a bit wary of using it on any of my installations. Oh and it doesn't have any mapping functions anyway. What do you mean by that? What did you see coming from/to the server? I've been using it and not noticed anything. I know it does present adverts in the browser but what else have you seen to call it adware?
localzuk Posted October 16, 2007 Posted October 16, 2007 I put spiceworks on a VM, it's quite funky for an SNMP/Monitoring tool but it's Adware! Watching whats going back and forth to the spiceworks server I would be a bit wary of using it on any of my installations. Oh and it doesn't have any mapping functions anyway. I'm surprised to hear this, as it carries the truste mark as not being adware... And what do you mean to the spiceworks server? Do you mean an external server or your local install server?
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