I would like to track network port usage over time. We are in a battle here with the desktop technician group over installing new switches. As stupid as it sounds they want us to light up every port. We refuse on the basis of cost and security, the latter should win any fight around here, but seems to be mute. they push back on the basis of cost and time. I figure it is pure laziness and passthejobist.
So I know when I run an inventory of devices in NCM I get the port usage at that point in time. What I would like to do is be able to see if the port was ever used, kind of like what I can do with IPAM and IP addresses. Currently I have an elaborate plot of merging CSV files over a given period and showing that they where not used for an entire month they are dead, and reclaimable. Of course I would have to go out and reclaim them, but then hey, I could screw up every now and again and get their port in the reclaiming process. I have been using the engineer switchport map software to do this, I really want something automated.
