About NeDI

NeDi = Network Discovery

NeDi discovers, maps and inventories the computer hardware connected to your network. It contains a lot of features and capability in a friendly program for managing enterprise networks. For example: if hardware breaks or is removed from the network, NeDi can inform you that the device is no longer connected, so it kind of acts like a hardware security tool as well.

What can NeDi do?

Discover and inventory Ethernet "devices" (switches, routers, wireless APs, etc.), including detailed Cisco device information.

Discover and inventory "nodes" (hosts), including TCP/IP address, MAC address, NIC type, and the switchport to which it is currently attached.

Create RRDtool graphs automatically for interface input/output, CPU, memory, and temperature of Cisco devices.

Monitor managed devices so that email alerts are sent when devices become unreachable.

Receive syslog messages from managed or unmanaged devices, allow easy viewing and searching of messages using NeDi's web GUI, and send email alerts for high-priority messages.

Receive SNMP traps from devices and send email alerts for high-priority traps.

Or, even more succinctly, NeDi does all this stuff:

• Network Device Discovery
• Network Node Discovery
• Device Inventory (what versions, modules and module versions)
• Device configuration
• Configuration storage
• VLAN management
• Route Management
• Interface Management
• Network Mapping
• Mapping of interface to node
• Subnet management
• Interface Status
• VTP info
• CLI Access
• Web Access
• Device log management
• Spanning tree topology
• Multicast management
• Device link management
• Stolen node detection

For example, NeDi contains an IP->MAC Address->Switch->Switchport mapping script that makes it trivial to find what port someone is on.

How NeDi Works

NeDi scans your network using Cisco's CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) to search out Cisco devices on the network (and other devices that support CDP discovery protocol, such as HP ProCurve switches). It can also include other non-CDP-compatible network components, but it works best when those are located at the network perimeter. NeDi's scripts need SNMP read access for all network hardware. Privileged telnet access can be used to get the MAC address table on IOS and CatOS based switches (faster), but SNMP is sufficient. The configurations are simply read via telnet.

Choose NeDi and GroundWork Monitor

Choose NeDi as part of an IT Monitoring stack based on GroundWork: NeDi's included in our Network Management Solution (NMS) option for GroundWork Monitor Pro subscribers: it's only one of the dozens of best-of-breed tools we've unified into a fully featured IT monitoring package. Email us at [email protected] to find out more.

Thanks to NeDi Project Lead Remo Rickl for the Swiss Chocolates he brings us when he visits from Switzerland!