detemining when a port was last used. 1

[youcandoit]

we need to do an audit on the ports to determine what's available. everyhting is patched but only a few have link lights. whats the command to determine when a port was last used? thanks.

 

[InDenial]

In my honest opinion... you are looking at it the wrong way.. You should not be checking for port usage... you should be checking how many devices there are that make use of the network. based on that decide how much is still available.

the above is kind of easier said than done. Especially if you have a large network. what is your network situation?.. large, small, ip setup...

InDenial

 

[RookThis]

You can look at the counters, I can't recall which command does that, so I would have to access a switch to determine the command if you can't find it, but what can do is check the tx and rx counters to see if the numbers have incremented since the last clearing of the counters.

What I have done in the past is to clear the counters on say Sunday night when you know there is little traffic, then check the ports again to see which ports had traffic on them. The ones that remain at "0" are probably not in use.

Are you running catos or ios, what version, and what type of switch?

 

[PalmTest]

Have MRTG monitor all your switches.
Let MRTG monitor all ports, also the inactive ones.
In a few days you can see whitch ports are used and which not.

 

[leedsit]

Hi,

we are always checking whats used on our devices,

I normally clear all counters on the switch

i,E 2950 / 3500

enable # clear counters

Then wait 3 weeks ( just incase someone is on holiday and their PC is switch off ), check the port stats, any ports with 0 against you can pretty much take as being unused.

enable# show interface

LEEroy
MCNE6,CCNA2,CWNA, Project+

 

[paulk29]

PalmTest,
I'm interested in the MRTG method, can you tell me where I'd get this software and how to set it up?

Thanks

Paul

Paul Kilcoyne B eng. CCNA

 

[youcandoit]

paulk29

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

I dont manage the routers and switches so I cant use this. i only manage the Call managers.

 

[barbossa]

issues this command

show int count

this will display the counter per each interface