On 19 Sep 2005 at 8:32, rizal sharif wrote:

> I have a problem in my company where we have about 50 network nodes without
> any labelling. I am instructed to identify the nodes in each room and also
> in the server room and label it.

> Question:
> Is there an effective way for me to do this? I am thinking of disconnect
> each individual cable in the server room and do pinging from each nodes one
> by one. This is tedius jobs and can only be done on weekend.

  Can you tell us anything about the network technology in use?
Ethernet/Token-Ring/Appletalk?  Co-ax/twisted-pair/fiber?
Swtches/hubs/other?


  Current industry practice is to number each faceplate, assigning a suffix
letter to each individual jack, and duplicate these labels at the
corresponding jack on a "patch panel" in the telecom room (which apparently
is, in your case, the server room).  Within each faceplate, the jacks should
follow the standard color code:  Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, ...

  It may be possible, using ping or other simple tools, to get a list of
machine names and their IP addresses.  Hopefully the machine names will tell
you where the machine is or who uses it.
  Then, using ping and arp, you can get MAC addresses to go with each of
those IP addresses.
  Finally, your switches *should* be able to tell you what MAC address(es)
are in use on each port.  (If you have hubs rather than switches, they
probably won't provide that information.)  So that at least lets you map the
connections athat are in use.

  There a handful of other effective ways to approach this that come to
mind, but they're even more tedious.

David Gillett

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