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Switchport Mapping? (Anyone get this to actually work?)

I have Orion installed with the toolset. I know there is a switchport mapper which to me is totally useless, it shows me the MAC address associated to a switchport which doesn't give me anything I"m looking for.

I have Cisco LMS 3.0 installed and after a bit of configuration it tells me what is on each switchport (IP address and hostname of the PC or IP phone). I was hoping that Orion could do this but it doesn't seem possible. If it did or or Cirrus I would probably get rid of LMS altogether.

I also had a device called NetMRI that did this very well, you could search for a PC, username or IP/MAC and it would display the switchname/IP, port, speed/duplex of the port.

I hope SW will get this functionality soon!

Chris

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chris.lapoint

I have Orion installed with the toolset. I know there is a switchport mapper which to me is totally useless, it shows me the MAC address associated to a switchport which doesn't give me anything I"m looking for.

It should also show you the corresponding IP address and DNS hostname if available. Did you specify a secondary IP address of a router or server connnected to the same subnet as your switch? This is used to map MAC address to IP address and then we do a reverse DNS query to resolve IP to hostname.

I have Cisco LMS 3.0 installed and after a bit of configuration it tells me what is on each switchport (IP address and hostname of the PC or IP phone). I was hoping that Orion could do this but it doesn't seem possible. If it did or or Cirrus I would probably get rid of LMS altogether.

Have you tried the Find IP/MAC Address tool in Cirrus? It is located on the right side-bar of the Cirrus console. If you don't see it, go to Windows and check the box next to Find Address. You'll want to run an inventory job across your relevant switches and routers to ensure that it has the data necessary to perform its mapping.

jbaulsir

Chris, We have been looking for this feature also, I just tried Switch Port Mapper on Engineer Toolset Eval (9.0) and even after adding

•	MAC addresses of connected devices

•	IP address of connected MAC addresses

•	DNS/NetBIOS lookup of IP addresses The fields are blank What am I missing?? JB

cshannahan

First we are only demo-ing Cirrus. But I have tried it and no it's not the thing I'm looking for. That brings back way to much useless information, you have to dig your way thru it. An app needs to be made that actually does this, tracks users and hosts so you know where they are on your network. Other products do it very easily that's why I'm a little puzzled why Solarwinds can't/hasn't.

If you want to see this work then get a demo of NetMRI appliance and check it out there, it's slick.

cshannahan

Not sure, I get the same thing, pretty useless tool unless you're just look for the mac address. Here is what I have runny on Cisco LMS. First is the report on the system, 2nd is a toolbar on my desktop that accesses the system.

chris.lapoint

cshannahan, have you looked at SolarWinds LANsurveyor for this purpose? It provides you the ability to schedule automated scans of your network and create L2 / L3 mapping. You can search for an device and determine exactly how it is connected.

If the only thing you're looking for is the ability to track where users and hosts are on your network, then I agree Cirrus may provide much more than what you need. Here are the top 5 use-cases for using Cirrus:

Scheduled backups of device configurations - gives you the ability to backup for disaster recovery and quickly rollback to last known good config
Automated configuration change notifications - ability to quickly know when something has changed in your environment
Inventory - e.g., is that serial number in my maintenance contract for a device that is not in commission
Bulk upload of configuration changes - e.g., need to change SNMP community or ACL across multiple devices, upgrade firmware, etc.
Ad-hoc configuration downloads/uploads - ability to download and upload device configs or config updates on demand

cshannahan

I know it does all of that, and for the most part very well.

I was looking at getting rid of Cisco LMS and moving to Cirrus but without the user tracking I can't do it. Our environment grows a lot and we have had different contractors cabling, etc. We're in Fort Mcmurray Canada where it grows by the second so our labeling and documentation is poor. I started here over a year ago and I'm still tracking cabling and other things down that's why the user tracking comes in handy.

I'm not sure how they do it but it's a very useful tool.