Network management Toolkit

Open source tools to help manage your Cisco network

David Davis Tech Republic

Published: 03 May 2005 12:00 BST

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article to share the top three Cisco administration tools I use on a daily basis, and I asked TechRepublic members to chime in with their own favorites ("Learn which three tools no Cisco admin should be without"). In response, two TechRepublic members, Cstone and EjayHire, mentioned how open source tools have been a great help with administering their networks.

I decided to look into some of these free tools and found several worth sharing with TechRepublic readers. After you check out my recommendations, post to this article's discussion with your own.

Familiarize yourself with COSI
A great place to start is the Cisco-centric Open Source Community (COSI). COSI is an Internet-based community that develops free Cisco tools and makes them available for download from its Web site. Currently available for download from this Web site are six Web-based tools and almost 50 scripts and utilities. The scripts and utilities all include documentation, and the community has developed all of these tools to work with Cisco IOS routers, switches, firewalls, or CiscoWorks management software.

In addition to providing all of these great tools for free, COSI's Web site also offers other benefits. Clicking the link to download a script takes you to a community download page, which also features discussion forums for questions and support of these tools. It's important to remember that Cisco's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) doesn't support these tools, so you must count on your own skills and the help of others in the community.

Of course, the basic idea behind open source development and these types of communities is that, by working together, users can share and enhance software to provide free and powerful software for everyone. More specifically, COSI's efforts hope to create tools that can ease some of the management burden for Cisco administrators.

Before we delve deeper into COSI's offerings, I have one caveat: These tools aren't ideal for new Cisco IOS users or anyone who doesn't have some Linux experience. Many of these tools help automate more advanced Cisco admin tasks when administering a midsize to large Cisco network.

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Have you looked at moodss and its snmp module? (mo... Jean-Luc Fontaine
May I suggest you look at NMIS- it includes all th... Eric Greenwood

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