SNMP Sweep tool

The SNMP Sweep tool in ETS for the Desktop scans a range of IP addresses, showing which IP addresses are in use. It provides the following information:

• DNS name
• System name
• Location
• Contact
• Last reboot
• System description

Open the SNMP Sweep tool

• To launch the tool from the Toolset Launch Pad, locate the SNMP Sweep tool and click Launch.

• You can add the tool to a tab in the Workspace Studio, and access it from there.

• To launch the tool from the Windows Start menu:

  1. Click Start > All > SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset.

  2. Right-click SNMP Sweep, click More, and click Run as administrator.

Perform a sweep

1. Enter the beginning and ending addresses of the IP address range you want to scan.

2. In the Scan for drop-down, specify whether you want to scan for all devices, or only devices that are responding or not responding.

3. Click Start SNMP Sweep.

If a computer is configured for IP forwarding, it is considered capable of routing. The computer may not actually be routing packets, but it can function as a router. This includes Windows-, Unix-, and Linux-based computers running IP forwarding services and daemons.

Export, print, and copy sweep results

After you perform a sweep, you can transfer the results to other tools through exporting and copy and paste capabilities. You can also print the discovered information.

To export sweep results:

1. Click File > Export, and then select the type of export.

2. Select the information to export.

3. Name the path for the exported information.

To copy sweep results, click Edit > Copy Selected, or Edit > Copy All.

To print sweep results, click File > Print, and then select the information to print.

Publish to the web

Sweep results can be published to a static HTML page containing all the discovered results.

1. Click File > Publish to Web.

2. Select the fields to include, and then click OK.

3. Name and specify a location for the file, and then click Save.

Clear sweep results

When you are finished with the information returned by the SNMP Sweep tool, to delete the results, click Edit > Clear List.

Modify SNMP Sweep settings

When requesting values, such as the description and machine enter values, SNMP Sweep uses SNMP community strings. You can specify community strings, ICMP configuration values, SNMP configuration values, reverse lookup, and whether or not to play sounds during the sweep.

1. Click File > Settings.

2. Click the Community Strings tab, and then specify the community strings you to use when polling your subnet.

   The most commonly used community strings must be listed first. Click a community string and move it higher in the list or lower using the up and down arrows.

3. Click the ICMP tab, and then specify the following values:

   • Ping Timeout: Designates the maximum amount of time in milliseconds that SNMP Sweep waits for a response from a target IP address. If a target IP address does not respond within the number of milliseconds set here, SNMP Sweep assumes it is down.

   • Packet Time-To-Live: Designates the number of hops you will accept along the way to an IP address. With a setting of 32, a packet could pass through up to 32 different routers on the way to the remote IP address before being thrown away by the network. Normally you would set this to 32 hops.

   • Delay between pings: Designates the time in milliseconds to wait before sending pings to each node. This setting is used to arbitrarily slow down SNMP Sweep. This is important on dial-up lines or to limit the amount of traffic generated by SNMP Sweep.

   • Pings transmitted per nodes: Designates how many pings should be sent to each IP address during scanning. Set this to 2 or higher when scanning networks containing Cisco routers. If the target IP address is not in the ARP cache of a Cisco router, and then the router will throw away the ICMP query (ping) while it requests the MAC address of the target IP. The first ping never reaches the subnet of the target IP address. In this situation, the second ping is the one the target IP address responds to.

4. Click the SNMP tab, and then specify the following values:

   • Packet Timeout: Designates the number of milliseconds SNMP Sweep should wait for an SNMP reply before assuming the packet is lost and trying again.

   • Query Attempts: Designates the number of times SNMP Sweep should retry an SNMP query before stopping. This should normally to 2 or higher.

5. Click the Scanner tab, and then specify the following values:

   • Reverse addresses via DNS/WINS: Select this option to attempt DNS/WINS reverse lookups for the name of each IP address. SNMP Sweep automatically uses the DNS and WINS servers configured on the computer running SNMP Sweep.

   • Play sounds during scan: Select this option to play a sound each time SNMP Sweep finds a device.