monitoring catalyst switch performance

[columbus-4]

Greeting All,

I'm somewhat new to this area of networking. I was wondering if there is any tool out there that will keep me informed of the performance of the switches in my LAN? Whether it is power failure, bad ports, bad supervisor module or intermitting link lost. Is there a tool that i can remote into and get this kind of information? Also, i'm look for information on how to lock down ports using the mac address. I hope i am wording this right. What i'm trying to do is stop a unknown user from being able to plug a device into an active jack and get access to my network. Thank for all you help. CW

[johnmar.mulder-wolswijk]

Columbus:

On locking ports down with Mac addresses, look at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps628/products_configuration_guide_chapter09186a00800d6a38.html#xtocid7

For performance (throughput) in siwtch ports we usthe free tool MRTG

Look at:

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

It this post helps, please rate it

[sivaprakasam81]

Hi

I am looking for the same solution, do you have any idea on this. Thank you.

[Marvin Rhoads]

Port Security.

I believe the solution Johnmar was referring to is port security. The link he posted isn't working for me, but see for example http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2950/software/release/12.1_22_ea5/configuration/guide/swtrafc.html#wpxref86378

From that reference, it states: "You can use the port security feature to restrict input to an interface by limiting and identifying MAC addresses of the stations allowed to access the port. When you assign secure MAC addresses to a secure port, the port does not forward packets with source addresses outside the group of defined addresses"

Also, for network management, you might take a look at one of the open source projects such as Spiceworks (http://www.spiceworks.com/) before taking the plunge into CiscoWorks. You can also download a 90 day evaluation copy of CiscoWorks (http://cisco.mediuscorp.com/lms).

I hope this helps. Please rate the post if it does.