CISCO 4006 Switch detection

Hi,
is there a utility or a way to detect what 4xxx series switch a box is connected to?
Basically, I would like to know if two boxes are connected to the same physical switch, or to two different ones. Is there a way to tell?

Thanks,
RMSe17

There are several ways to assess the IOS, (NMap, pOf etc.), but detecting the make and model isn't something I think you can do since the responses you will get are a product of the TCP/IP implementation which is, obviously, the same across IOS versions but isn't necessarily specific to the make and model of the hardware itself.

What are you trying to acheive?

I'm not really sure, but if you're managing the switch with CiscoWorks (an expensive piece of software), I think you should be able to view the MAC address of the device connected to a particular port.

Peace always,
<jdenny>

I dont know how to detect or even access it. We are troubleshooting a batch of computers in the lab, and the cables are burried into the wall, and I need to see if they are all going to one switch, or if they are split between two, and if they are, which computers go to which switch. But since it's a switch, it seems transparent to the computer when I do something like tracert... So I don't know how to detect if they are connected to two different ones

If you can log into the switch, you will be able to see what IP or MAC or both depending what switch you have, is assigned to what port on the switch, then providing you know the IP's/MAC's of all the hosts attached to the switch you can work out what host is on what port.

Log in on the switch. Use a console cable if you cannot reach it via the network. If CDP is enabled, do a show cdp neighbor

Displaying CDP Neighbor Information

Edit: URL is too long.. There's a <br /> and a space automagicly added in there.. I though this was fixed?!?

I guess my question is, how can I talk to the device through network? The way things are set up now, direct serial cable connection to the switches is very inconvenient

No need to logon on the console on all of them.. One should do.. Use the show cdp neighbors command to find out what other switches/routers are connected to which port. Use i.e. show cdp neighbors 2/3 detail to get the IP addresses of the switch/router on port 2/3. Then hop (telnet) from switch to switch doing the cdp thing.

You can assign the switch an IP address after you connect to it through the console.

The instructions on how to do that are readily available all over the place. Search google for "assign ip address to cisco switch" and the first couple of links are good.

If you really can't do that... a simple low tech solution may still exist. You'll need two people... If the PCs and switches are not within shouting distance... some two way radios or cell phones will be handy. You'd be amazed at how handy those things are... I keep a set in my vehicle all the time because you never know when you're going to need them... anyway....

Have one person at the switch and another person at the PC. The PC will have to be turned on so the link light on the switch will be on.

Simply pull the ethernet cable out of the NIC card in the PC and the link light for that specific PC will go out on the swich. Plug it back in to confirm that it lights up again.

Now go to the second PC. Repeat.

Low tech... but it'll work.

It'll be easier, in the future, to configure an IP for it and just telnet to it.
Then you can match up MAC addresses of NICs in each PC to port numbers on the switch.

And then find out who installed the infastructure and forgot to label the cables, make sure you dont use them again!

Similar to phishphreek80's idea, you can try this low tech solution as well - assuming you have physical access to the switches, power one off (killing all network connections) - check your PC's and see which PC's now have no access to network resources (Internet, file shares, etc.) - record those, then repeat the whole process for each switch that you have.

As mentioned, if you know the IP addresses, usernames and passwords of the switches involved you can log into those switches (possibly via telnet, console, or HTTP access) and view the MAC addresses of the PC's connected to each port on the switch. This of course is all dependant on how much info you have for each switch and if those switches are currently assigned IP addresses.

Yep, after some running around, I got access to the switch room, and watched the lights go out as I unplugged couple machines. Low tech, but yea, it worked. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get access to the switches, so I was trying to find a way to do it via network, but the switches aren't configured with IP addresses...

Anyway, found out what I needed.

Thanks to everyone!

RMSe17