Switch Port Mapper Tool
Locate Devices Connected to Switch Ports
Switch Port Mapper helps network engineers identify the switch port to which a device is connected and thus eliminates the need of manually tracing the network cables. The tool discovers the devices plugged into each port of a specified switch. The tool is useful for system and network engineers to gain visibility into the IP, MAC, VLAN, status and availability of ports. Since this is a real-time discovery, the administrators can also view the operational status and speed of each port.
Switch Port Mapper Features
End-to-End Port Mapping
- Maps Switch Ports to the Physical Location of the Device
- Multi-vendor switch support, like Cisco, HP, 3Com, Nortel, etc.
- Automatically retrieve VLAN details.
- Retrieves and displays the virtual IP Addresses of the systems.
- Displays all the MAC Addresses connected to a port, like computers, IP Phones, etc.
Adding Switches
- Add Switches Manually
- Import Switch inputs from a CSV File
Grouping & Scanning
- Group Switches and scan them separately
- Map multiple switches simultaneously.
- Scheduled scanning of switches. Switches in different groups can be scheduled separately.
- Mapping details are stored in the database and provides the mapping history.
Powerful Search
- Search using IP Address/MAC/DNS Name/Subnet/Physical Location to get the details of switch ports.
Alert Notifications
- Notifies the change in port status as “Available” or “Used”.
- Notifies when users move on the network
Reports
- Auto-publish the results to a CSV/ XLS.
- Port Availability Reports to view the Used and Available ports in all switches.
- Reports on Port Usage, Port Speed, Port Type, etc.
End-to-End Port Mapping
The Switch Port Mapper provides an end-to-end mapping with an option to include mapping of physical ports to switch ports. The administrator can provide the mapping of the physical ports and switch ports in a csv file, which can be imported to the Switch Port Mapper results. This does not need any change as long as there is no change in the physical mapping. It automatically retrieves the VLAN details, Virtual IP Addresses of a device, and detects all the devices connected to a port.
Adding Switches
Adding Switches to the Switch Port Mapper tool can be either manual or by importing the Switch inputs from a CSV file. The csv file should contain the Switch Name / IP Address, Switch Community, Router Name / IP Address, and Router Community as comma separated values. Once the switches are added, they are automatically mapped in the background. Optionally, the administrators can also specify the associated subnets to sweep prior to scanning of a switch. This will make the switch learn all the MAC addresses of the connected devices, which will be retrieved and shown in the results.
Grouping and Scanning
Switch port Mapper allows to create different groups based on the location or building. The Switches can seamlessly be moved within groups anytime. Switches in different groups can be scheduled to run at different times.
Whenever a switch is mapped, the results are automatically published as a csv file that can directly be opened in Microsoft Excel. The history can also be viewed from the OpUtils user interface. This helps administrators to get the details of the devices that are connected to a port in the given period and vice versa.
Powerful Search
The Switch Port Mapper can map multiple switches simultaneously. The administrators can add all the switches in their network and map them all at once. This gives a complete port status of each of the switches. To locate where a specific device is connected, the administrators can simply search using the MAC, IP Address, DNS Name, or the Location of the device.
Alert Notifications
The Switch Port Mapper provides an option to notify the administrators about the change in state of a switch port by email. Switch Port Mapper generates alerts when:
- The state changes from Transient to Available
- The state changes from Available to Used.
- The device connected to a port has changed.
Reports
OpUtils, based on the Switch Port Mapper results, provides the Port Availability Report of the network. It maintains a policy to declare non-responding ports as available ports. Ports that are not active beyond 10 days are shown as available ports. This can also be configured to a desired value. The Port Availability Reports of OpUtils include: Available Ports, Used Ports, and Stacked Ports.
In addition to the Port Availability Reports, it also provides various reports on port usage, speed and type:
- Switches by Usage
- Switches by Group
- Switches by Vendor
- Switch Ports by ifSpeed
- Switch Port by ifType
- Device with Virtual IP
Switch Port Management
In addition to mapping switch ports to devices, OpUtils allows administrators to block or unblock a switch port from within this tool. A switch port can be made administratively up or down through SNMP using the SNMP write community string of a switch. This is very useful to block the unwanted traffic from a particular port due to a virus attack or hacking.
Supported Switch Types
The Switch Port Mapper tool is tested to support switches of the following vendors:
| Cisco |
Nortel |
HP |
| Foundry |
Extreme Networks |
Intel |
| DLink |
Huawei 3com |
Allied Telesyn |
| Alcatel |
Force 10 |
Dell |
Free Switch Port Mapper
The Switch Port Mapper tool can be used to map a single switch in the OpUtils Free edition.