Hi There Michel, Thanks for your response, i was hoping i could gather some interest just for a discussion. :) I have virtually solved the problem and have a nice working piece of software. Basically i turned to neighbor discovery protocols. In this Case The Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). There is a CDP MIB that provides me with a lot of information about what devices are connected to each interface and therefore, I am able to hop between devices because i know connected IP's. Basically, my prgram jumps to the device the user specifies as the start IP, entering in the SNMP information and the network address they wish to map. My program then goes to that device, gathers all system information about the device, then gathers information about each local interface. Then my program looks into CDP MIB and looks at the CDP Cache (where neighbor details are stored), creates an entry in the database for each connected IP address, then assigns the connected interface entry to the local interface entry. My program then hops to the next device and does the same, so on and so forth. I have parameters in my code to make sure all IPs visited are noted, and a list of IPs to visit to prevent the oprogram from needlessly visiting the same device twice. This way i can track the hop count and limit it if required. At the end of the data collection, my program then analyses the data and draws a network map and listens for traps :) its a bit like a very basic network management system (extremley basic) but it works sweetly :) Obviously this is not a perfect solution because CDP only operates on cisco devices and in some cases, CDP is disabled. There does exist a little protocol called the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP, refered to as 802.1ab i think). This is a vendor neutral neighbor discovery protocol and operates very much like CDP, but on any vendors device (Cisco, HP etc) providing the device supports it (my Catalyst 2950s do not, but the 2960's do). However, due to my limited budget the equipment i have does not support LLDP *sigh* Since doing this for my uni project i have become particulary interested in network mapping and management. It really is quite a variedand detailed topic :) Comments and thoughts are welcomed :)

Hi all, I am developing an application that uses SNMP to draw a topological view of a network (currently only layer 3). However, I have hit a very hard stone wall and i fear the answer may be so obvious I am overlooking it. Basically, how can i find the IP address of a router interface that is directly connected to another router? (I am using cisco 2600 series in my lab) My initial idea was to view the routing table to get a next hop address. This is fine if the routing table contains a next hop address. But, i have found that in many instances the routing table just says "Go out Serial 0/0". It is as if i need to send a probe packet out the interface to say "Hi, who is connected to me and what is your IP" Here is a scenario of what I am trying to do. I have 2 routers, router A and router B. A work station is running my application on fa0/0 of router A. the two routers are connected using their serial 0/0 interfaces. My app jumps to router A (the workstations DFG) and gathers all it needs. It now needs to jump to router B to gather info about that device. but the routing table on router A contains the exit interface, NOT the next hop address. So how would i find the address of router B's S0/0 interface to allow my app toconnect to it. Any help is greatly appreciated and let me know if you need a clearer explanation Kind Regards,

Hi there, I am looking to create an application that uses SNMP to map a basic network, however i have never used SNMP and am struggling to implement it - i am not quite sure where to start. I have read numerous articles about SNMP on the web ranging from the basics to the defined RFC's as well as example code and i am still completely in the dark. I get the idea of how SNMP works using managers and clients, OIDs, Mibs etc but have no idea how to go about it with C# code. Could someone please assist me! Kind Regards,

Hi All, I am looking to develop a program that will map a network from a machine based on the number of hops from the workstation. However I need a starting point. Am i going to have to find some way of sending/injecting a packet or are there special classes that have been created to do this. Any reference code or articles would be greatly appreciated. Apologies for the broad post but we all need to start somewhere! Regards, Deviao

Hi there and thanks for reading. :-D I am currently writing a basic virus scanner but i have hit a problem. I know that a virus will have a signature (a unique order of binary 0's and 1's) that represents how the virus is written. The exact same piece of code will always have the same binary signature. However, how can i convert a file into its binary format ready to be scanned?:confused: My current idea is to keep virus signatures in an xml file, then scan files in a folder for the signatures stored in the xml file. I am trung to keep it as simple as possible as i have been asked for a basic virus scanner. This project is still in its early stages so i may be approaching this completly wrong, if so, pointers would be appreciated. :) Regards,

Hi All and thanks for reading this. :) I Have been assigned a task where by i need to be able to connect to any router interface on a network from any desktop (that is also on the network) and monitor the data/packets that are been transmitted. However i am in a bit of a pickle. One person has said to use Perl, another said Python but i am unsure and before i learn something new i would like to make sure i am picking the right language. :doh: I know perl has a telnet module which i might be able to use, and i am pressuming python is the same. But is another language, like c o c++ going to be easier or better? Any comments and insight will be most welcome. Many Thanks Mark

Hi there all, thanks for reading this, i appreciate it. :) I am looking into possible Final year projects. I am doing a Network Computing Degree and i want to create something really impressive. The Final Year Projects arent what i expected but so far i have come up with a few ideas. Listed below 1. Software Firewall 2. Packet Analyser 3. Remote Access software. Can anyone think of any others? Also, im not sure what language I should use to create them. i am thinking C++, which is a pain because we have only learnt c#, c, vb.net and Java. Basically i just want to talk to people to throw ideas around and give me advice etc etc. :-D Anyway, Thanks again and i hope to hear from you. P.S - Sorry if this is in the wrong section Mark

Hello there. At the moment im currently creating some code to query active directory. I am listing the users that are on a particular domain. howevr the results are over 15,000:sigh: and mine bottoms out at 1400.:doh: I get an error message saying that i should use message pumping durin long processes but i have no clue what that is? Can anyody help?:confused: Regards, Mark