Tracking Inactive Ports

This same question was asked and answered some time ago - google this newsgroup for answer provided by Walter Robinson et al

Unfortunately, even when you spell the name as "Roberson", it is not easy to pull out the relevant posting. As best I can tell, google has lost a large number of my postings :(

The short answer is ... uh, I lost track of the question, as Merv unfortunately failed to quote anything he was replying to.

Not really.

Please see the threads starting from

I can highly recommend Crannog Netwhere

not too badly priced either.

Tracks port usage and MAC to IP to Port mappings.

Or else here's some freebies

Netdisco -

- Can be complicated to setup & configure

Switchmap -

- easy to setup and I've had this running on Windows 2003 Server. Provides MAC to IP to Port mappings as wells as port usage.

I understand that there are commercial software tools that can help with this. I have no experience with them however an approach that I have used is to periodically clear all the interface

counters "clear counters" and then a couple of weeks later (or whatever interval pleases you) do say "sh int | inc packets|protocol" and any that are zero have not been used. This is OK for a modest number of users. If you are an investment bank with 10,000's of users then this will not do.

The "sh interface" output also includes a "last input" timestamp and there is a standard mib for this too. However - I have found over many years that neither are in the least reliable. YMMV.

Thanks for the replies, while I'd like to look into some of the above mentioned software, right now the "sh int | inc packets | protocol" command works perfect.

Thanks for everyones help. I'd like to look into some software at one point, but for now the "sh int | inc packets | protocol" command works perfect.