Network Tracking Database (NetDB)

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About Network Tracking Database

NetDB keeps track of devices on your network and the status of your switch ports over time. You can map devices to your switch ports, locate ports configured for a VLAN and recover ports and unused static addresses. NetDB has been tested with almost every Cisco Ethernet switch, is written in Perl and works on most linux and BSD distributions. It's designed for medium to very large networks, but should work in any Cisco environment.

What's New in NetDB v1.9 (released March 2011)

• IPv6 Neighbor Table support plus IPv6 DNS resolution
• Includes a new Unused Port Report for easy port recovery
• Allows wildcard searches for switches and MAC addresses
• See the UPGRADE document for upgrading from earlier versions

Major Features

• Track all entries in your MAC and ARP tables across your network routers and switches over time
  
• Track the usage of static IP addresses and generate reports for static address recovery
  
• Generate switch reports to recover unused ports or plan for network upgrades
  
• Find all switchports configured for a vlan and find what devices if any have been connected
  
• Find all devices on a VLAN and the last time they were online
  
• Quickly track down a problem with a device and locate its current state on the network or last connected state
  
• Includes a command line tool and an easy to use web interface with access control
  
• Web interface includes sortable columns and access controls
• Generate CSV reports from the web interface or the command line
• Change VLANs from the web interface with access controls on a per switch or per user basis
  
• Send Wake On Lan packets from the Web Interface to remotely wakeup workstations
  
• Fast imports, pulls data from 1,000 or more network devices in under five minutes (depends on the hardware used)
  
• Support for VRFs and almost every modern Cisco IOS and NX-OS device
• Support for port security, port-channels and trunk ports for VMWare and phones
  
• Optional graphing through MRTG to track the usage trends on your network
  
• Optionally integrate NAC registration data to retrieve user registration information based on the mac address
  

Security

• Runs everything as the netdb user
  
• Uses and/or SSH/Telnet to gather information from your devices and does not require write access
  
• Does not use SNMP, so no security issues or MIBs to deal with
  
• Web Interface has access controls to restrict the information users can access based on their userid
  
• Web Interface is hardened

Supported Devices

• NetDB has been tested on these platforms and likely works on other Cisco devices:
  
• Cisco 12.2 - 15.0 IOS routers (2600/2800/2900) for ARP data (no switch module support)
  
• Cisco IOS 7600/6500 SXF and above plus VSS support (No CatOS Support)
  
• Cisco 4500 Family (4006/4506/4948)
  
• Cisco 3750/3560/2970/2960/2950 (anything using 12.2(35)+ will work for sure, most 12.2(25)SEE+ codes works, but really old versions have bugs in them)
  
• Cisco Nexus NX-OS 7000/5000 Switches and Nexus 2000 FEXes
  
• Cisco 2924/3500XL support for those of you with really old devices
  
• Cisco ASA/FWSM ARP table support (SSH Access Only, no telnet support)

Backend Details

• Centralized configuration file in /etc and managed through command line tools, database is for data only
• Indexed MySQL database for millisecond response times and scales to millions of rows
  
• Multi-process scraper scripts to gather data from hundreds of devices in minutes
  
• Optionally integrate NAC registration data to retrieve and search user registration information
• All code is documented and organized, program structure is modular for integration with your environment
• Extensive logging and debugging support for troubleshooting
  

Documentation and Support

• Check the FAQ for preinstall advice and common questions.
• Extensive documentation is included in the download. See the INSTALL and UPGRADE documents for help.
• Please post any other questions in the Help Forum, or feature requests in the Open Forum.

License:

• NetDB is licensed under the GPL