[Gllug] Network maps

[Vincent AE Scott]

Adam Bower(adam.bower at framestore-cfc.com)@Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 09:22:32AM +0100:
> Ok another question for the day.
> 
> Does anybody know of any good network mapping/monitoring tools for linux 
> that are free (as in beer would do at a real stretch) all I have found 
> so far is this http://www.marko.net/cheops/ but it looks as though it is 
> no longer maintained. I am about to give it a go and try and build and 
> install it etc. but any other suggestions would be welcome.


if you mean mapping like what HP network node manager provides, then
your pretty much out of luck.  Another tool that i've used before is
gxsnmp, which like cheops and scotty is an attempt at a free NNM.

like most of these network management platforms, they utilize SNMP walks
for disovering connectivity.  i'm not aware of any free software tho,
that looks into the vendor MIB's to identify how devices are connected
together.  the free tools AFAIK, stop at traversing the routing table
and sequentially pinging all possible IP's on each of them.  i.e. they
can be quite noisy, and in-effecient. [1]

so, to sum up, for mapping at least, there's not much choice, most of
the tools will handle a few local /24's but dont expect them to go much
further.  OpenNMS might be an option, as John has pointed out, but it
almost requires a super computer before it'll run.

it really depends on the size of the network, the free solutions should
be OK for a small system.  if your talking enterprise, then you really
should consider commercial offerings.  but they do cost mega moola.


-v
[1] there are shortcuts, but they've been patented.

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