[gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed

[gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed

[Timothy A. Holmes]

Hi Folks:

I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the
physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy
nilly over the last 8 years or so).  I am looking for a program to run
on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the
port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can
begin tracing plugs to ports.  Due to budgetary constraints, open source
/ freeware is very very preferable.

Thanks


Timothy A. Holmes
IT Manager / Network Admin / Web Master / Computer Teacher
 
Medina Christian Academy
A Higher Standard...
 
Jeremiah 33:3
Jeremiah 29:11
Esther 4:14



-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed

[Hans-Werner Hilse]

Hi,

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0500 "Timothy A. Holmes"
<tholmes@mcaschool.net> wrote:

> I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the
> physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy
> nilly over the last 8 years or so).  I am looking for a program to run
> on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the
> port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can
> begin tracing plugs to ports.  Due to budgetary constraints, open
> source / freeware is very very preferable.

Not sure about "distinctly" (that will certainly depend on the switch's
electronic and programmatic design), but - tada - you can usually cause
the traffic light on the switch to blink with network traffic ;-)

So broadcasting some UDP packages out into the wild should be
sufficient. Use e.g. netcat. OTOH, you might want to play with ethtool
and switch connection rates for short intervals. Usually switches have
a light indicator for the speed, too, so that should be easier to
distinct on a busy switch. Toggle this in a shell loop with a few
"sleep"s inserted...

-hwh
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-user] Re: Port Tracer Program Needed

[James]

Timothy A. Holmes <tholmes <at> mcaschool.net> writes:

> 
> Hi Folks:
> 
> I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the
> physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy
> nilly over the last 8 years or so).  I am looking for a program to run
> on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the
> port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can
> begin tracing plugs to ports.  Due to budgetary constraints, open source
> / freeware is very very preferable.

check out jffnms, it's in portage now and works with a very large
array of routers, switches, snmp, and other devices/portocols.

There is also an excellent installation/configuration page:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~angusyoung/docs/jffnms/docs/jffnms.html

The docs are new, and there is a jffnms.org support group. I have
yet to see, Javier fail to provide a monitoring solution for 
any sort of device you may have. As one that builds/noodles
with all sorts of ethernet attached hardware, jffnms rules.


hth,

James



-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-user] Re: Port Tracer Program Needed

[James]

Timothy A. Holmes <tholmes <at> mcaschool.net> writes:

> 
> Hi Folks:
> 
> I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the
> physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy
> nilly over the last 8 years or so).  

Also take a look at 'fping' as you may find what you are looking for
among it's many features. It also has a perl script at the bottom
of the man page that is highly configurable for different needs.


hth,
James



-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list