2 replies to this topic

[wildweaselmi]

I get asked alot on how full a switch is. How many cables are plugged in? Without going to the site and counting all the cables I have no idea on how to answer this question. I am not aware of a command that could help identify percentage used.

Can someone help me?

[rev.research]

In CatOS switches you can run:
sh mac
Which will show you the amount of traffic xmit and rcvd on each port since it was cleared. The dates of when they were cleared show up at the end of that command.
I typically copy all the ports and paste into a text file and then open that text file in Excel with Fixed and then sort to find out how many active ports on the CatOS switch.

In IOS you could do a show ip int brief which will show you current used ports but will not show you anyone who has shut there computers down.

The best thing to do is to utilize the expensive Ciscoworks tool that will track the SNMP traps of ports going up/down and display the last time a port was being used.

[wildweaselmi]

Checking for Open Ports on a switch

Here are some instructions on how I check a switch for which ports are being used versus which switchports are not being used.

We utilize port counters which are good as long as no one has issued a clear counters or the switch hasn't been restarted.

• log into your cisco ios switch
• type show version (see how long the switch has been up)
• show interface status (copy results into a text file)
• show interface counters (copy results into a text file)
• open excel and open each of the txt files (prefer show interface in far left columns and counters after that)