Switch Port & IP Address Management Software

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.

Role Based Administration

Role based administration helps administrators to exercise more control by creating users with Administrator or Technician Roles. While users in Administrator Role will have complete access, users in Technician Role will only have read-only access.

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.

The Switch Port Mapper also allows the administrators to add their own columns to store user-defined values. Columns can be created both at the switch-level and at the Switch Details level.

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.

Switch Port History and Audit

When it comes to managing the switch ports, auditing is utmost important to know who did what and when. Switch Port Mapper logs all the events performed using the tool with the name of the OpUtils User and the date and time of the event. This helps administrators to track and audit the changes made using Switch Port Mapper.

The administrators will also be able to track the device that was previously connected to a switch port from the previous scan results that are saved in the history.

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.

Network Tools

In most cases, administrators might also want to get the current status of the switches. From the port details view, they can perform the following actions:

• Ping - To send an ICMP packet to the switch to check its availability
• SNMP Ping - To check whether the switch responds to SNMP for the given community string.
• Resolve DNS - To resolve the DNS name of the switch
• Resolve MAC Address - To get the MAC address of the switch
• Trace Route - To get the network path of the switch.
• System Explorer - To get the complete details like the snapshot, CPU, Disk Space Memory details, etc., of the switch