looking for unused ports

[wanyph]

Hi!

I want to find a program that helps me to find unused ports in my baystack450 stacks.
For expample:
I have a stack with 5 450´s.
On all of the 120 ports is a patch cable connected.
But I don´t think that on all the ports is a PC or something in use.

I need a program that frequently checks the ports if there´s a link or not and the program should make a statistic for me.
When there´s no link for a long time (1 week), I can use this port for other hosts.


thanks,
mewi

 

[pseudocybe]

I don't know of an automated process like you're talking about - perhaps some kind of snmp management like HPOV NMS could trend activity on the ports and when you see none, you would know.

We use a manual process to do it - go into the menu and make a note of all the ports that have a down link. Then go through those ports and look for activity since the last time you zeroed the stats for the stack. The ports with no traffic are available.

HTH

 

[jimbopalmer]

I do the same, but I check every port looking for error statistics and collisions, one byproduct is all available ports

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[wanyph]

Thanks,

I will try the manual version.



mewi

 

[GTomte]

When you use Device Manager, the Nortel Networks tool for configuring switches, you can mark all ports and choose "edit". Then you can see the "last change" value for all ports. That helps!

Regards
G. Tomte
Working with:
- Nortel Networks, Routers, switches
- Alteon
- CacheFlow
- Blue Coat

 

[wanyph]

Thanks,

that´s a simple and great way to find the ports!



mewi

 

[Ewey]

Why not use device manager?
You can look at the port status or stats for a complete stack of 450s in a single hit.

We swear by OSM 2.0
The VLAN manager function is great and you can quickly see miss-configs and also cretae new VLANs across and entire Campus without visiting every switch individually.


Cheers,
ewan

 

[niklasw]

MRTG is a great tool for monitoring traffic load on network links. You could use that for this as well.
It produces graphs on how much traffic goes through a certain port on a switch/router/anything. No traffic = noone using the port.- Right?


-Niklas

-Cheers, Niklas

 

[niklasw]

MRTG is a great tool for monitoring traffic load on network links. You could use that for this as well.
It produces graphs on how much traffic goes through a certain port on a switch/router/anything. No traffic = noone using the port.- Right?


oh,

http://www.mrtg.org

-Niklas

-Cheers, Niklas

 

[InDenial]

First message on this forum... here goes...

Personally I someone who hates to do repetitive actions. like login, show config, copy paste the stats and so on...

So most of the time I find out what the OID's are for something I want to know...

If you are doing management from a management station wich supports te snmpget and snmpset and snmpwalk just do an snmpwalk on the info you want to have and pipe them to a file.

You only have to do this twice a week and compare the two files for ports not being used(e.g. if there is a difference between the first value and the last)

snmpwalk -c <commstring RO> <switch-ip> interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifInOctets

and

snmpwalk -c <commstring RO> <switch-ip> interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifOutOctets

this will produce the in and out octets on a port.

InD.

P.S. the use of snmp might differ from yours but the OID is a MIB-2 OID so...

 

[NARBE]

Hello,

You can try a free tool called Getif (get on

http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/getif.htm).

It's very useful and easy to use. Go to the &quot;interfaces&quot; tab and check &quot;Oper up only&quot;.
You can use it also as MIB browser.


Cheers