Open for Voting

I'd like to add a Widget to NPM that shows the MAC addresses on any switch port. Is there such a Widget? If not, please make one!

I find frequent need to display the current MAC address on various Cisco L2 switchports, and I end up using NPM AND an SSH session to the switch to get this info when NPM might be able to be the sole provider of it.

1. My NPM front page has a Resource that shows the ports with High Errors & Discards Today.  It shows the switch name, the switchport involved, and the errors & discards on that port.  I use this Resource as a to-do list to reduce or eliminate high port errors, resulting in improved performance for users.

2. Once a switchport shows up in that Resource I can click on the problem Interface in NPM and open up a page dedicated to that specific switchport.  The page has tons of great information, including the actual interface configuration.

But it doesn't tell me the specific MAC addresses present on the port.  And it could and should.

Is there a Widget I don't know about that can show the MAC addresses on the port?

Even better if it could show the ARP info for those MAC addresses using the default gateway for the switch, and the user name associated with that device..

3. Since I can't see the MAC address(es) on the port, now I have to embark on another journey:

     A. SSH into the switch

     B. Issue the "show mac address int" command for that port

     C. One-by-one copy the MAC(s)

     D. Paste them one at a time into Infoblox's query tool or into Cisco ISE's query tool and start looking into the types of devices (VoIP phones, printers, PC's, TC's, other)

     E. Use yet another tool to discover the user(s) logged into those devices

Those are five steps that make me less efficient, and it seems that NPM and IPAM and UDT could save me a load of work here--if the right Widget(s) can be created and installed.

The first widget should display a list of MAC addresses on a switchport, and would be installed in the NPM page for that switchport.

The second widget should display ARP info about that MAC address from IPAM, and also would be on the switchport's page.

The third widget should pull data from UDT and display the user name(s) associated with every MAC address on a switchport.

Are this already available for making the data viewable on a single page, and I'm missing how to make it happen?

If the Widgets aren't available, please make them available.

rschroeder

  • Since applying hot fixes to my UDT (NAM) environment and reconfiguring to ensure appropriate routers & switches are polled / discovered for UDT info, I am getting the right data in a reasonable amount of polling time.

    Problems/challenges that remain:

    • Some sites use Nexus 5K's as Distribution Switches, and 5K's don't play well with UDT trying to poll their L3 interfaces to provide ARP info for the L2 Cisco access switches below them.
    • Some sites have Cisco 65xx VSS Distribution Switches that are overwhelmed by UDT's snmp polling, and cannot be relied on to provide ARP info for the access switches below them.

    The 65xx's and Nexus 5K's are on their way out in the future; hopefully whatever we choose to replace them works well with UDT.

    On the bright side, traditional Cisco 29xx and 39xx and ASR routers DO work well with UDT's polling, as do the 6807 VSS pairs I use for distribution Switches in other sites.

  • in reply to deverts

    UDT was initially unreliable in my environment, and had been temporarily disabled until February of 2019, at which time hot fixes and updates improved it to the point of it being reliable again where typical routers and distribution switches are in play.  Where the router is an over-used 65xx or a Nexus 5K, UDP is not playing well with them..

    Since a switch knows the MAC addr on all ports, it seems something that NPM should be able to see and display, even when UDT hasn't been purchased/installed.

    Therefore UDP is something I'd think would be unnecessary.  IP address and MAC address data should be easily searched and displayed in NPM and the Orion SQL database, rendering UDP unnecessary.

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