It won't be a real help if you get an alert which says the Ethernet cable con¬nected to machine 192.168.1.152 has gone bad. Because the biggest problem which an admin faces while trouble shooting cabling errors is to find the right cable. And if you don't have intel¬ligent cabling deployed, it becomes very difficult to pinpoint the error. The only thing which can help is an elaborated network diagram or map. But there is a bigger challenge. Making such a elabo¬rated map is not kids play and takes a lot of human hours, and in today's dy¬namic infrastructure setup, updating this map regularly for let's say 1000 node network becomes nearly impossi¬ble. Just imagine everyday all your 1000 nodes get a new IP from the DHCP and your network diagram needs updating.



To make the mapping process auto¬mated, you have this one of its kind soft¬ware. It's not a cheap deal. You have to spend some 40,000 INR to get a licensed copy of this application. But once you use it you will start loving it. This is the only software in my knowledge that is available today which gives you a true map (even exportable to Visio) of your network including cable links. patch cord details connection specific ports and ma¬chines. etc.

And the beauty is that one can set alerts on not only devices such as PCs. switches. routers. etc. but also to cable connections connecting two de¬vices. So in case of a cable failure you will get an error which will not only tell you which IP has got disconnected but will also tell you the port of the switch connection and the machines which were connected through that particular patch cable.