Recommended Network Auditing Tools

Does anyone have a favorite network auditing tool? I'm looking for something that can auto discovery network hardware, such as switches, routers, etc. I've come across SolarWinds LanSurveyor, but it's kind of pricey.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Nuwin

Spiceworks?

Free Network Monitoring Software | Spiceworks Free Network Management Software

dadaji

+1 for Spiceworks.
Its free, I use it everyday.
The community is also very helpful.

DevilWAH

CDP, ping, and tracert..

It depened how managed you devices currently are. if they dont have IP addresses and arnt named well. then you will end up having to go round by hand to manualy sort them all out no matter what product you buy.

And for that first stage of getting them in order, having auditing tools can become more of a hinderence than a help. And once you have them set up correctly, (you have been round and tidied them up, named them and assigend managemnt addresses) then you will in a much better place to think about waht ongoing auditing tools you want to use.

chrisone

DevilWAH wrote: »

CDP, ping, and tracert..

+1 ! couldnt have said it better myself. Also dont forget to trace the MAC addresses of these devices so you can pin point where exactly they are plugged into, just incase CDP is turned off, ARP will help a lot!

dynamik

Even better would be Nmap with the Ndiff script. It provides much more information information and can be automated.

Ndiff Reference Guide (Man Page)

Some additional Perl-based Nmap tools as well: http://www.unspecific.com/software

DevilWAH

how many devices are we talking here?? 10, 100, 1000 ??