Chapter 17. Tracking down devices
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to use the command line to track down devices throughout your network. To be clear, I’m not just talking about figuring out the general geographic location of a device. I’m talking about tracking down a device to the specific switch or router and port it’s connected to. Although this isn’t something you’ll have to do very often, when the need arises, knowing how to track down that elusive printer or virus-laden PC can make you a hero.
I won’t discuss every possible scenario in which you’ll find it necessary to track down a specific device. But drawing from my own experience, two basic scenarios come to mind.
Many organizations use a network-monitoring package like WhatsUp Gold to track network bandwidth utilization and uptime. When the network begins to slow, your manager may turn to the network administrator (you) to find out who the top talkers are—those devices that historically use up the most bandwidth. Most of the time, knowing the IP addresses of these top talkers is enough to figure out where they are, especially if they’re servers in a data center where things don’t move around very much. But occasionally you may encounter a mysterious device—nobody knows where or what it is!