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Florent Courtay
Asked: 2010-03-13 03:58:35 +0800 CST

Simple switch ports state monitoring tool

  • 772

My users keep unplugging our meeting rooms computers network connection.

As i can't check the computers every time a meeting ends, i'd like to find a tool, preferably running on windows, that can monitor some cisco switch ports state, and every time a cable is being unplugged, send me an email.

I know that some monitoring solutions can do that already, but i wonder if something simplier (and preferably cheap / free of course !) exists.

windows network-monitoring switch

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Not exactly state of the art but written mostly as a proof of concept, the following could be used to detect when a host goes down. Add it in a regular cronjob, modify it so it emails you everytime something is down and voila! Cheap n' quick solution.

    #!/usr/bin/env perl

%hosts = ( 
    'host1' => '192.168.1.1', 
    'host2' => '192.168.1.254',
);

while (($hostname, $ip) = each(%hosts)) {
    system('ping -c1 ' . $ip. ' 2>&1 > /dev/null');
    if ( $? != 0 ) {
        print "host: ".$hostname." down\n";
    } else {
        print "host: ".$hostname." up\n";
    }
}
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  2. I don't know about monitoring the state of a switch port, but you can certainly monitor ICMP echo response of the device connected to the port.

    There are lots of free/open source monitoring solutions available that will do this, my personal favourite is Nagios.

    Whilst you're at it, you might as well get Nagios monitoring your servers and other network devices too!

    Edit: Sorry, Nagios actually runs on Linux, but this wikipedia page will help you find a monitoring system that runs on Windows.

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  3. Net::SNMP module for perl can do that. Take a look at Perl for system administrators(linked chapter handles SNMP) for some practical examples. Be sure to check out the module itself at cpan.

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