porttracker features

porttracker v2.2 Features

Polling

Summary

• *NEW* Refresh the information in a single view using the 'immediate' polling mode. This feature allows you to get up-to-date details about a given view without waiting for the next scheduled polling job.
• Freshens data using pings with bandwidth throttle (optional)
• Distributed pollers
• Valuable Information about Infrastructure devices
  • Description
  • Location
  • Poll Duration
  • Layers
  • First/Last Seen
  • Comments
• Valuable Information about End Devices and Ports
  • Speed and Duplex
  • VLAN number and description
  • VTP Domain
  • Packets
  • Errors
  • First/Last Seen

For First time visitors

Polling is when porttracker gathers end device and port information from the infrastructure devices. Optionally pollers can be configured to ping address ranges to freshen ARP and bridge databases prior to polling to account for less 'chatty' end devices which would otherwise have aged out.

There are several reasons why a distributed architecture might be used instead of a single-appliance solution:

• Scale; distributed pollers operate in parallel, which reduces the length of a polling cycle. Different parts of the network can be assigned to each poller while data remains in a single view. The more pollers that are added, the more the polling time reduces proportionally.
• Security; Pollers use SNMP to gather information from network devices that have been assigned to them. They pass the data back to the database on the master appliance via an encrypted SSH tunnel. Tracking switches in areas of the network that are shielded by firewalls does not require SNMP ports to be opened up on firewalls, rather a poller is placed on the DMZ and a point-to-point SSH tunnel allowed through.
• Service Provider; providers who have more than one "customer" network may want to keep things simple by providing a realm and a poller for each customer, while keeping the data together for centralized but discreet reporting.