Any app for network admins in company?

[Chriss]

Hi!
I'm searching for an app or a solution how to keep in track a network with over 80 PC and all the servers, printers, routers, scanners connected to each other through LAN wifi.

I mean, I need something where I can draw, visualize the network I'm building over the time, the changes I make over the time so I can open the diagram an have a visual overview of my network and his hardware's.

For now I writing notes, drawing some networks on paper etc. but honestly that is really crap.
I lost my drawing's, non-stop overwriting something by correcting some names, ip adress, MAC...

Is there any app out there what system admins are using to visualize their entire system?
Maybe some freeware or opensource?
And I dont need something complex, just somehow to still manage my network in a visual style,
so I can easier remember where is what connected, what is the setup etc.

Thanks for any suggestion.

[Ian.M]

Hmm.  Ideally you'd want to be able to auto-update it.  The easy and *WRONG* way to do that would be to leverage your existing knowledge to script it in an application you are comfortable using.  e.g. If you are a guru level Excel wizard,  import the XML output of NMAP, fuzzy match it to a table of device 'fingerprints', descriptions and comments and create a chart programmatically, using objects from the drawing toolbar, filling in each text box using the NMAP output and fuzzy matched description and/or comment if available.

However that's setting you up to be a bus factor of *ONE*, so it would be strongly preferable to use off-the-shelf software. 

Have you tried googling:
   FOSS network diagram autoupdate
then reading some of the n best ..... of YYYY articles, reviews and other comparisons it returns?

Edit: AAGH, I borked the link   Now fixed.

[2N3055]

You can use  The Dude
https://mikrotik.com/thedude
to scan and supervise  and keep track..

For design and documentation there is Visio, that has millions of templates, so making drawings is really quick.

[fordem]

There are network management solutions that can go out and "autodiscover" your network topology, some of them are "no charge" depending on the size of your network, others are offered free but will only work with network switches etc., manufactured by a particular vendor, as a convenience to the purchasers of their products.

Personally I don't care for the auto-discover type stuff - too many errors in the discovery - but the other management features that let you know what's up, what's down, etc. are fun to play with.

You can also go the other way - software packages like Microsoft Visio that let you draw your own diagrams and make them easy to update, provided you remember to update them.

[madires]

Open source alternatives: LibreOffice Draw or diagrams.net for example

[Chriss]

I tried to search with google but I come up with many unclear infos and I asked cos maybe somebody can show me a direction like you.

Im happy with you suggestion.
Im familiar with excel scripting, xml etc...
I need to learn more about nmap and that could really help me.
Thanks for this suggestion.

I also searching for some sort simple app to do my task, and somehow to avoid to much scripting if that is possible.

But nmap will do the job I think.

Is there a way to put virtually a device what nmap didnt discovered but I know it is there?

Lets say I have a adsl router.
Then i connected another router by wifi from another room to the adsl router.
To the LAN port I connect several pc's on the second router.
Nmap can see my second router and all the pc's are connected to the second router, but cant see the adsl router.

I would put that adsl router virtually to the list so I can remember me if I check my  network map...

Thanks.

[2N3055]

Seriously, check out The dude..

[Ian.M]

If you are scripting it in Excel, of course you can add fixed devices if NMAP cant find them.   Simply have a sheet in your Excel workbook with the fixed devices and a separate sheet for the NMAP import that gets recreated each time.

Hint: Write your macro to clear the import sheet before import and delete the named ranges then import the NMAP output data, append the fixed devices then recreate the named ranges from the combined data.

[madires]

Search for "network inventory".

[Mr.B]

I don't know of any free ones that really cut it.
However, it has been a number of years since we evaluated offerings.
We use Lansweeper.
It is not cheap, but it is very good.
It is free for up to 100 assets. But 100 assets is not many.
After that you pay 1 Euro per asset per year.
We have about 3,500 assets in our network.
We would be classed as an medium size company in New Zealand.

[bobcat2000]

I used spiceworks many years ago.  It was free before.  I don't know how free is free for now.

https://www.spiceworks.com/free-pc-network-inventory-software/

[Chriss]

Thank you good peoples for the replays and your time.
I really appreciate that.

I tried today nmap and Im very happy.
That tool is perfect for my tasks.
It has everything I need.