I’ve got a Planet Network FGSW-2620VMP4 on this network and was wondering what I SHOULD be able to see from it. I’ve got some SNMP set up, but I’m a newbie at that as well. When I hover over it in the map, it gets the System Name and Description right with the full “PLANET FGSW-2620VMP4 Managed PoE Switch”, so I assume it’s pulling that through SNMP. I can also go into the Snmp tab and flip through some port statistics and things like that.
Is there a way to get a visual representation of what is attached to the switch? I know I’ve BARELY scratched the surface of The Dude and am learning about SNMP as I go…
I don’t know what you mean by ‘visual’ representation but if you are in the Network Maps, right-click the switch in question and go to settings. Click the Snmp tab you should ‘in theory’ have a listing of your interfaces dumped via snmp. This is based on what your switches OID’s spit out via the MIBs that The Dude has on file. If you have a MIB for your switch (check the manufacturers website) you can upload it to The Dude which will give you more information in your Tabs (if it’s not already provided in ‘settings’). To add the MIB for your switch goto: Mib Nodes, File, and click the + Symbol. Add your mib and you should be good to go.
An example is I have an HP Procurve 2600 switch, with the correct Mibs loaded (default) I can see Interface (port, vlans, type, MTU, tx/rx rates), Ip, Route, Arp, Bridge Fdb. From here if you want to link more switches (or devices) to this switch you can create ‘snmp’ links in your network map and point them via your Ethernet ports found via snmp.
By ‘visual’, I meant that in the map it would show which devices are connected to that switch. e.g. 1 line to the switch, 1 line from the switch to a WAP, 1 line from the switch to a touchscreen, 1 line from the switch to a processor, etc. Right now everything originates from the 192.168.1.0 network ‘cloud’. This could just by my inexperience with The Dude, though, and I might be missing an obvious setting.
Regarding the “visual representation” of how things are connected in your network: I am assuming you did a discovery and The Dude shows every device connected to an IP subnet? Discovery - IMHO - does not provide you with a map that shows how your network is set up in any meaningful sort of way. Much better off to manually create the map and link each device to the correct switchport as I think you are wanting to do.
First add the switch to a map and get the SNMP profile set up so it is giving you the info you will need (sounds like you have got this far already)
Next add a device that is connected to that switch: Right-click on the map and select Add Device. On the add device dialogue box put in the IP (or DNS name) of the device, the click Next. On the next dialogue box add a service to be monitored (don’t get too excited about adding all the different probes you want at this stage) - I normally just add ping and then click Finish.
A new device appears on the map with the parameters that you just configured. You can open that device and edit the parameters, add more probes, specify its type, etc, etc. You will definately be wanting to do many of these things but I will leave it to you to discover those things.
If you already know which switchport the device is connected to great, skip the next bit, otherwise. Open the new device’s General Tab and make a note of its MAC address. Then open up the settings page of the switch, select the SNMP TAB and then the Bridge-FDB sub-Tab. Find the device’s MAC address in the bridge forwarding Database and see which port that MAC address is associated with. Now you know which switchport the device is connected on.
Then right-click on the blank part of the map and select Add Link. Click on the switc and drag the link to the new device. When you release the mouse button the Link settings dialogue will open. Select the switch as the link source, select the link type as snmp and then sellect the correct switchport from the list. There are other parameters that you can adjust as well such as link type and speed. Worth the effort to set up your own link types and to define the speeds correctly so you get links going red when they are over committed etc.
This might sound a bit onerous but once you get the hang of it, it is quite simple and quick to do. I have found that adding devices manually rather than using discover is a much, much better way to do it. I learn more about my network and I know that the map is correct. It is also showing me things that are helpful when doing fault analysis.
It is well worth your effort to get this stuff set up correctly but be prepared to have a few goes at it till you learn the best way that suits your environment and what you are wanting to achieve. I have gone “back to the drawing board” with my Dude installation at least twice over the last 4-5 years as our system has grown and things I had done at the start prevented The Dude from being able to function the way I wanted it to.
You can add your own devices under devices/types tab on the main screen. For a generic switch you can add a static and put an imported image of that device on its appearance. There are many ways to represent devices these are just a couple.
Very cool. Starting to get somewhere. I definitely like building the map manually first.
I do a lot of Control4 equipment and they now have SNMP info being pushed out, and you can even enable SNMP monitoring of a TON of devices/services within the system. I’ve imported three MIB files from Control4 and have gotten a “zigbee mesh status” probe working, but what is the best way to create a new device type that makes use of all the ‘standard’ SNMP monitors I’d like to use… and then how to I set it up so I can recreate all that info on another Dude server installation?
We have created a few different custom device types. Primarily to set the device icon to pictures we have uploaded to our Dude server such as different switch and router types, different radio link types etc. We have also created some custom tools for different device types.
When you create a new device type you can specify which icon and which tools are associated with it so each time you set a new device as that type, it has the right icon and tools available. There is also a panel for the device type where you can select services that are required and to ignore. I have not played around with that section myself but there has been some discussion on this forum about those attributes. Perhaps someone with the experience can provide some advice.
Yes, but if you do that, you lose the ability to click on the link between the unmanaged switch and the end device and get bandwidth statistics for that connection.
