Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool v1.99.5 Released

This latest release was made available for download today. It adds support for SMC switches. We tested it thoroughly with an SMC6128L2 switch and there are now SMC specific extensions in our software to gather more information about the switch.

There was one fundamental operational change that you should be aware of: ping sweep has been moved up near the start of the switch mapping process. This was done to force the switch to update it's bridge tables with any mac addresses that may have 'aged' out of the tables. That way as many devices as possible will be seen. Be sure to put in all the IPv4 ranges you need to be pinged ahead of time.

Another set of changed dealt with the operation of the IP to hostname resolver. We added a control in Settings to turn use of the caching table on or off. We also added a control in Settings to be sure that it is erased on exit. The reasoning behind this is that in a DHCP environment, IPs change and you should probably be clearing the table more often. The table is used much like a 'hosts' file for quick resolution of IPv4 addresses to hostnames in successive mappings. This will become more necessary in v2.0. In order to minimize DNS queries, we use this table. Now there are more options for erasing it to remove what will become stale information. One other thing we added was a check for duplicate hostnames - what we mean by this is two IPs having the same hostname. If this is found, you get to see the hostname(s) and IPs that are sharing the hostname. You would definitely want to manually erase the IP/hostname Resolver table in Database Maintenance if this occurs. If it repeats after doing that, you have a DNS problem.

Another change was in the area of print margins. A user pointed out that the print margins were rather large. Investigation revealed that the default margins were supposed to be 25mm. But in reality it was more like 250mm or one inch. If you are using a 96 dpi printer, then it is one inch. The File menu now has Print Page Options to allow you to change this.

Finally, in an effort to get away from the ancient Wise installer that we've used for years, this release now uses Inno Setup. Inno Setup reduced the size of the installer by around 1 MB. That doesn't sound like much but it is when you consider many downloads. It's also a modern and fast installer, so it works better on Windows 7.

http://www.switchportmapper.com/
or
http://www.netscantools.com/spmapmain.html

Enjoy!
Kirk

Need to know what's attached to your Nortel switch?

Watch this video to see how to use the Managed Switch Port Mapping tool to find out what's attached to a Nortel® BES110-24T switch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhDimMRpO8I

Enjoy!

NetScanTools (r) Basic Edition 2.1 Released July 8, 2011

On Friday we released NetScanTools Basic 2.1 - our first update to this software since January 2010. This is our freeware version of NetScanTools. It has just a few helpful tools that introduce people to the NetScanTools Product line.

Tools:
DNS Tools - simple query (ipv4 to hostname etc.), Who Am I (shows your IPv4 address, hostname and DNS servers), Test Default DNS (takes IP address or hostname and asks each default DNS server for translation).

Ping - uses standard ICMP ping to contact an IPv4 or hostname.

Graphical Ping - uses standard ICMP ping to contact an IPv4 or hostname and it graphs the response times over time.

Traceroute - uses ICMP packets to show the route between your computer and a target computer.

Ping Scanner - uses ICMP packets to ping every IPv4 address between a start and ending IPv4 address.

Whois - shows basic whois information for around 70 domain extensions and IPv4 addresses.

These tools are simplified in comparison to NetScanTools Pro which means you don't have all the options available and you only get one mode of operation - for example traceroute is ICMP only instead of ICMP, UDP, TCP etc.

Have a look and enjoy!
Kirk