dynamic network graph, how?

[Woomera]

ive been trying to find a tool that dynamically creates a graph of lan network or even further for some time now. cant seem to find any(preferably free). i remember once reading about a tool for unix-based OS's but i need one for either mac or windows.

[MrJinje]

ive been trying to find a tool that dynamically creates a graph of lan network or even further for some time now. cant seem to find any(preferably free). i remember once reading about a tool for unix-based OS's but i need one for either mac or windows.

When I worked for USWest/Qwest we used HP OpenView. But some quick searches for SNMP freeware turned up OpenNMS, never actually used it myself, but at quick glance this looks capable enough to do the trick.

http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page

Looking at their documentation this does run on Windows.

"As of OpenNMS 1.3.8, there is initial support for running on Windows. There are a lot of rough edges, but it is possible to install and run on Windows 2000 and up. "

Here is the help section detailing the Auto-Discovery and which protocols are supported.

http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Discovery

Here is where they describe how to create a topology map, like I said, never tried it myself, but it looks like it can be done. I assume they have an option to make the maps show lan segments inside a single office instead of geographic break-downs like this overview of Italy map.

http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Maps_In_Trunk

Hopefully it has a drill-down capability and you could click on the Rome office and then see map of all the Rome routers and switches. Then click on a switch and see the map of all the clients connected to that particular switch and so on.

If anyone has a smaller application that does not require SQL database's and running a WebServer we are all ears. I'm not sure I've ever seen a product like this targeted towards retail customers.

[Woomera]

how about dynamic host discovery. look at this project called Cheops:

http://cheops-ng.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

im looking for something like this.