Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
Hi, On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0500 Timothy A. Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy nilly over the last 8 years or so). I am looking for a program to run on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can begin tracing plugs to ports. Due to budgetary constraints, open source / freeware is very very preferable. Not sure about distinctly (that will certainly depend on the switch's electronic and programmatic design), but - tada - you can usually cause the traffic light on the switch to blink with network traffic ;-) So broadcasting some UDP packages out into the wild should be sufficient. Use e.g. netcat. OTOH, you might want to play with ethtool and switch connection rates for short intervals. Usually switches have a light indicator for the speed, too, so that should be easier to distinct on a busy switch. Toggle this in a shell loop with a few sleeps inserted... -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
Hans -- Thank you, I realize that I can make it blink with network traffic, the problem is that basically all the ports on the switches have traffic running constantly on them, so I need to find a way to make it distinctive enough so it can be picked out from the rest of the noise. I will try to run down the tools that you mentioned and see if any of them provide a solution -- thank you TIM Timothy A. Holmes IT Manager / Network Admin / Web Master / Computer Teacher Medina Christian Academy A Higher Standard... Jeremiah 33:3 Jeremiah 29:11 Esther 4:14 -Original Message- From: Hans-Werner Hilse [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:01 PM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed Hi, On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0500 Timothy A. Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy nilly over the last 8 years or so). I am looking for a program to run on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can begin tracing plugs to ports. Due to budgetary constraints, open source / freeware is very very preferable. Not sure about distinctly (that will certainly depend on the switch's electronic and programmatic design), but - tada - you can usually cause the traffic light on the switch to blink with network traffic ;-) So broadcasting some UDP packages out into the wild should be sufficient. Use e.g. netcat. OTOH, you might want to play with ethtool and switch connection rates for short intervals. Usually switches have a light indicator for the speed, too, so that should be easier to distinct on a busy switch. Toggle this in a shell loop with a few sleeps inserted... -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
Am Dienstag, 14. März 2006 18:08 schrieb Timothy A. Holmes: Hans -- Thank you, I realize that I can make it blink with network traffic, the problem is that basically all the ports on the switches have traffic running constantly on them, so I need to find a way to make it distinctive enough so it can be picked out from the rest of the noise. Save the following script as floodping.sh, and try it, you should be able to notice the traffic from your regular traffic: #!/bin/sh ifconfig $1 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.0.255 while true do ping -f -w $2 -b 10.0.0.255 sleep $2 done ./floodping.sh eth0 5 would mean that it does five seconds of intensive traffic (which has packets going to the switch in the order of 20ms or so, depending on your laptop, and the lamp should blink very frequently), then does five seconds of data sleep, which should be almost completely quiet on the switch (except for that occasional broadcast packet from another computer directed at yours). Be sure to use a network that isn't on your local net for testing, as my network is 192.*, I've used 10.* in the example. If you use a network that's regularily used on your network, you might get problems discerning the sleep phase, as the arp address of your laptop propagates to all other endpoints on your net due to the use of a regular network, and this might mean a lot of ARP queries, depending on your network size. I've used a technique like this to check the cabling in a building, and it worked just fine. HTH! -- --- Heiko. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
WOW -- that looks great -- Thank you very very much I will be trying it shortly TIM Timothy A. Holmes IT Manager / Network Admin / Web Master / Computer Teacher Medina Christian Academy A Higher Standard... Jeremiah 33:3 Jeremiah 29:11 Esther 4:14 -Original Message- From: Heiko Wundram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:50 PM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed Am Dienstag, 14. März 2006 18:08 schrieb Timothy A. Holmes: Hans -- Thank you, I realize that I can make it blink with network traffic, the problem is that basically all the ports on the switches have traffic running constantly on them, so I need to find a way to make it distinctive enough so it can be picked out from the rest of the noise. Save the following script as floodping.sh, and try it, you should be able to notice the traffic from your regular traffic: #!/bin/sh ifconfig $1 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.0.255 while true do ping -f -w $2 -b 10.0.0.255 sleep $2 done ./floodping.sh eth0 5 would mean that it does five seconds of intensive traffic (which has packets going to the switch in the order of 20ms or so, depending on your laptop, and the lamp should blink very frequently), then does five seconds of data sleep, which should be almost completely quiet on the switch (except for that occasional broadcast packet from another computer directed at yours). Be sure to use a network that isn't on your local net for testing, as my network is 192.*, I've used 10.* in the example. If you use a network that's regularily used on your network, you might get problems discerning the sleep phase, as the arp address of your laptop propagates to all other endpoints on your net due to the use of a regular network, and this might mean a lot of ARP queries, depending on your network size. I've used a technique like this to check the cabling in a building, and it worked just fine. HTH! -- --- Heiko. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
Am Dienstag, 14. März 2006 19:24 schrieben Sie: I created the script as you suggested, and when I executed it ALL the lights on the ports that have connections go nuts Okay, your switches are layer 2 switches, not layer 3 switches then... (they don't understand IP traffic, only ethernet traffic; a broadcast ping is a broadcast ethernet packet which gets forwarded to every port by a layer 2 switch). I didn't think of that when I sent out the snippet; our switches are layer 3 switches, and they won't forward packets between different network segments, even when they are in the same ethernet segment. But, you can still make this work if you have two computers connected to the network, one which you know the switch port and IP of. Your setup should look something like this: | Switch | --|--|-- Port 1 (192.168.0.1) Port x (your Laptop, fixed at 192.168.123.45, some address not on your network) Port 1 mustn't necessarily be port 1, may also be any other port, just as you may use any other IP you know. Then, try the following: #!/bin/sh # Set up networking, adjust to fit your network. ifconfig $1 192.168.123.45 netmask 255.255.0.0 broadcast 192.168.255.255 # Standard loop. while true do ping -f -w $2 192.168.0.1 # Your known host IP sleep $2 done When you call this script (just as before), only those two ports which are present in the diagram above should start to fire (and sleep), and as you know one of them, the other can't be hard to actually discern from the rest of the ports on the switch. If the above doesn't work, there are other ways which involve creating ethernet packets with invalid recipient address at high speeds which shouldn't get forwarded by a layer 2 switch, but these involve a little more trickery than a small shell script. I'd be happy to write a little Python-Program which does just this, but before I do, test the above. ;-) -- --- Heiko. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
On Tuesday 14 March 2006 11:08 am, Timothy A. Holmes wrote: Hans -- Thank you, I realize that I can make it blink with network traffic, the problem is that basically all the ports on the switches have traffic running constantly on them, so I need to find a way to make it distinctive enough so it can be picked out from the rest of the noise. I will try to run down the tools that you mentioned and see if any of them provide a solution -- thank you TIM Timothy A. Holmes IT Manager / Network Admin / Web Master / Computer Teacher Medina Christian Academy A Higher Standard... Jeremiah 33:3 Jeremiah 29:11 Esther 4:14 -Original Message- From: Hans-Werner Hilse [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:01 PM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed Hi, On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0500 Timothy A. Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am getting ready to start a project here in the building to map the physical infrastructure of our network (its been assembled kinda willy nilly over the last 8 years or so). I am looking for a program to run on my laptop that I can plug into a wall plate and it will cause the port activity lights on the switch to blink distinctly so that I can begin tracing plugs to ports. Due to budgetary constraints, open source / freeware is very very preferable. Not sure about distinctly (that will certainly depend on the switch's electronic and programmatic design), but - tada - you can usually cause the traffic light on the switch to blink with network traffic ;-) So broadcasting some UDP packages out into the wild should be sufficient. Use e.g. netcat. OTOH, you might want to play with ethtool and switch connection rates for short intervals. Usually switches have a light indicator for the speed, too, so that should be easier to distinct on a busy switch. Toggle this in a shell loop with a few sleeps inserted... -hwh -- Netwox (+ optionally netwag) has some neat tools. One that I have found handy is the audible ping. Whenever it receives a successful ping response it beeps your pc speaker. It may or may not have any benefit for you in this secenario but it can be useful at times when you are muddling around and can't see your screen, you can just listen for the beep, beep, beep then disconnect the proper cable and it goes silent. Or in the reverse, plug in the right cable and you start to hear the beep, beep, beep. Netwox has a ton of other neat tools, servers and clients. If your switches are manageable you can probably look up your switches cam table (MAC address to eth port mapping) then look at your clients ARP cache after pinging your broadcast address on each network. Good luck on your network mapping. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Port Tracer Program Needed
Netwox (+ optionally netwag) has some neat tools. One that I have found handy is the audible ping. Whenever it receives a successful ping response it beeps your pc speaker. It may or may not have any benefit for you in this secenario but it can be useful at times when you are muddling around and can't see your screen, you can just listen for the beep, beep, beep then disconnect the proper cable and it goes silent. Or in the reverse, plug in the right cable and you start to hear the beep, beep, beep. You can do that with ping -a too :D Dave -- -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.12 GAT d-(+) s+: a24 C++ UBL++ P L++ E--- W+++$ N+ o? K? w O? M-- V? !PS !PE Y PGP- t++ 5++ X+ R+++ tv+ b++ DI D++ G e+ h-- r++ y+ --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
