ellem's Journal: Stuff to do with Managed Switches

What "cool" stuff can a SysAdmin do with a managed switch so that it is more than a fast hub?

Um

[Nyarly]

Coolest Managed Switch Trick Evar:

1. SNMP on.
2. MRTG, Cricket or OpenNMS pointed at switch
3. Wait.

At some point, someone will come to you, and say "Why is the network slow today?" and you can then:

1. Turn to your terminal and bring up many impressive graphs.
2. Hmph and haw over them, until you find the very port that's sucking bandwidth.
3. Track the MAc addresses on that port.
4. and respond...

"That would be your box running KaZaA, nitwit." Or whatever. Point is, you've got a strong audit trail on the first three