Port status monitoring

[cynthiamoh]

May I know how can I monitor how long a port had been in the 'down' status for a cisco box? Purpose is to determine whether a port is underutilise (ie nobody is using a particular port for a long period of time).

Thinking of using these variables (port number, port status, port ifLastChange) to monitor this statistics, is there any program that can automatically capture and generate these values in report format.

Not sure whether I am in the correct track? Please advise. Thank you.

[o.hassairi]

well, u can use a syslog server that captures the up/down events but you cannot filter for a specific port.

it shows all events with corresponding date & time.

u can use kiwis syslog for example it's free

then in the switch

switch(config)# logging 172.16.87.14 (ip @ of syslog server)

[cynthiamoh]

Hi,

syslog server captures the up/down status with that current date/time when it gets the value, it doesn't tell how long the port had been up/down. That's why I thought of using the mib value "ifLastChange" to determine that.

The purpose is to monitor the ports usage so as to generate a monthly report to show how long a port had not been in use.

Or is there other better ways to go about it?

[faheyd]

Or you can go graphical and use MRTG.

http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/mrtg.html