Even Better Cisco Nexus Switch Support

I put out Managed Switch Port Mapper 1.99.9.7 (don't you love the numbering) yesterday with two changes in it. The biggest change affects Cisco® Nexus switches - most of this latest work was based on reporting by Nexus 5K owners, particularly a user with a 5596 running 5.0(3)N1(1c). I found out some important things about NX-OS bridge mib reporting that I won't share here to keep SolarWinds® in the dark. I accounted for the strangeness and now it maps Nexus well. I also found out another interesting thing about those switches and now all the MAC addresses should show up - more than in the last version - don't forget you can change the maximum per port MAC reporting limit in Global Settings - you may hit the default limit. That change has the potential to affect MAC reporting on IOS switches too, but I could not see a change in the Cisco switches I have in-house.

A minor fix was made to the processing of qBridge MIB data (affects pretty much everybody else including Cisco Small Business switches) to eliminate a potential infinite loop. We had no user reports of it happening, but now it will never happen.

This release has the usual MAC to Manufacturer database updates and the latest SQLite. Get it at http://www.switchportmapper.com/ and if you need a trial period reset code, contact us from there or from http://www.netscantools.com/email_general.html

-Kirk

Minor releases planned for this week

NetScanTools Pro 11.31 will be released with improvements in IPv6 error reporting in both ping and traceroute. Updates to SQLite and the databases will also be included.

We've been working with several Cisco Nexus series switch managers and found some strange things in what is reported by the switch - in one case the switch reports values outside what is defined in bridge mib. Those have now been accounted for and we plan on another minor release this week.

We at NetScanTools support World IPv6 Launch Day and we would like to tell you that we are incrementally adding IPv6 support to our software. NetScanTools Pro 11 currently has a number of tools supporting IPv6. NetScanTools LE will be doing whois lookups of IPv6 in the next release. Here are the IPv6 enabled tools in NetScanTools Pro 11.30:

• Ping (11.0+) and Traceroute (11.3+ only) both support IPv6 address targets both direct and through tunnels.
• DNS Tools accepts IPv6 input for Simple Query, NSLOOKUP, DiG, Get Basic DNS Records and IP to ASN.
• Network Neighbors (11.3+ only) shows the IPv6 equivalent of the ARP table.
• Packet Flooder can target IPv6 addresses with UDP packets.
• Packet Capture can capture IPv6 network traffic.
• Country to IP or ASN shows IPv6 allocations by country.
• Network Interfaces shows the IPv6 link local and global addresses assigned to each interface.
• Whois accepts IPv6 global address input to find the ownership or assignment of those addresses. (11.3+ works best)

If you have NetScanTools Pro 11.30 and an IPv6 capable OS like Windows 7, please try these tools. You can even use ::1 as input - that's the same as 127.0.0.1 or localhost in IPv4. Try a ping or traceroute to ipv6.google.com or a whois of 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3. Be careful with Packet Flooder - use it with a link local address (starts with fe80:) of a nearby computer - don't forget the %scopeID number for link local addresses - see the IPv6 menu item to get the Scope ID.

Let us know if you like this hints and tips post.

Added Support for Cisco Nexus Switches

Cisco Nexus Switches are usually used in Data Centers and we have had a few people tell us that the Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool did not work properly. It appeared to talk with the switch OK, but did not give any MAC addresses or IP addresses even though most of the other columns were filled. And even more of a problem was that the program hung up while processing Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) information. Two big problems - both easily solved.

Since I didn't have a Nexus 5010 sitting around and I went into sticker shock when I looked at them on Ebay, I went to Facebook and Twitter to see if anyone had one - fortunately one of my customers (S. M.) did. I found out rapidly that NX-OS != IOS, so I had to find a section of NX mibs that gave me what was missing. I did and sent a couple test versions. The Nexus mapped just fine and gave us the MAC addresses - as long as STP was off.

Fixing STP was a bit harder, but I found a place in the processing of the STP data where information is retrieved from the SQL tables in a while loop. I saw the problem that caused it to never break out of the while loop and sent a test - problem solved. This was the second time I had worked this issue. I also made STP not an active column by default, but you can still put it in there using the Setting and Tools/Column Order and Visibility Editor. If you already have it visible, nothing changes.

Since I was working this minor release, I decided to look carefully at the error messaging and improved the text that the user sees - particularly on the very first SNMP query - if that one fails, you have configuration or settings problems that must be fixed - it's what you entered in Settings or your switch is misconfigured for SNMP.

All these changes are now in v1.99.9.6 released on June 6, 2012. Please visit http://www.SwitchPortMapper.com/ to get this latest version.

Have a good day! - Kirk

New Videos Added Daily

Our NetScanTools Pro 'How To' videos were in desperate need of updating, so we are doing one or two each day and posting them on our site and on YouTube. Please visit this page to see them:

http://www.netscantools.com/videos.html

We use Camtasia 7 to do these videos.