[c-nsp] Slightly OT: Network Mapping Tools

[Adam Armstrong]

On 21/07/2010 15:27, John Neiberger wrote:
 > I used to used HP Network Node Manager at a previous employer and
 > thought it did a really good job of automatically mapping the network,
 > especially since it handled L3 and L2 discovery well after a bit of
 > tweaking. I'm at a new place now and I'm wondering if there are any
 > good automated mapping tools out there. I want to focus on Cisco
 > routers and switches. I don't need something to map every other device
 > on the network, so I'd need to have a good way to filter out
 > extraneous stuff.
 >
 > Any thoughts?
 >

We (Observium - http://www.observium.org) do some mapping based on 
cdp/fdp/lldp discovery protocols, but whole network maps tend to be 
messy because graphviz isn't ideal.

Originally it was a major feature, but it's less important now because 
the open source mapping tools don't seem to scale or handle networks 
very well.

adam.