4506 Scanning Port on Switch

[drbk563]

I have a 4506 Switch with 3 x 48 ports. I am trying to find a way so that I can scan all the ports on the switch to find out which have printers connected to it. I need some kind of software or command I can use on the switch to find out which ports have printers and which ports have PC's connected to it? I currently have Solarwinds, however I do not see how that can help me?

Thank You

 

[aletoledo]

interesting problem, I'm curious to see what other people will suggest.

if all your printers are from the same vendor, you could look at the mac-address-table and then the mac address should reflect that manufacturor. Of course a lot of the bigger manufacturors have several ranges, if you're lucky the printers will all be similair models and you'll be able to sort out 90% of the printers.

 

[drbk563]

Thank you for the reply. Well the majority of the printers are HP Laserjet 4000N. I need to know on which ports on the switch the printers are connected too.

Thank You

 

[aletoledo]

if you do a "show mac-address-table" command, it will show what mac addresses are attached to what ports. if you identify what the first half of the mac address is for the HP printers, you can then scan down the list and see which match that address. If you haven't worked a lot with mac addresses before, just issue the command and you'll see what I'm getting at. Here are some examples of the vendor codes, (search for Hewlett-Packard)

http://www.cavebear.com/CaveBear/Ethernet/vendor.html

I wish I had a better suggestion, but I haven't seen one like that before. This will at least get you a good idea in the next 5 minutes.

 

[drbk563]

Do you have some other quicker method so that I can find out which are PC and which are printers?


Thank You

 

[helpdeskdan]

Yes, good physical network documentation. Let me tell you, that thing works every time!

Seriously though, at this point, there aren't any better methods. (Someone feel free to prove me wrong) You could maybe use a security scanner like nmap to do a scan, but you still will have to match the mac addresses up on the switch to figure out what port they connect to.

 

[drbk563]

Thank you for all your help I am going to see what I do.