How to Use SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 for Network Management
SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 is a network software that includes over 60 must-have tools for network engineers and administrators. It helps you to automatically discover network devices, map network topology, monitor device performance and availability, troubleshoot network issues, and enhance network security. In this article, we will show you how to use some of the most popular tools in SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 and how they can benefit your network management.
Network Discovery and Mapping
One of the first steps in network management is to discover and map your network devices and their connections. SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 provides several tools for this purpose, such as Network Sonar Wizard, Network Performance Monitor, Switch Port Mapper, and Network Topology Mapper.
- Network Sonar Wizard: This tool scans your network and identifies all the devices and their properties, such as IP address, MAC address, device type, vendor, model, serial number, firmware version, etc. You can also customize the scan settings and filters to suit your needs.
- Network Performance Monitor: This tool monitors the availability and performance of your network devices in real time. It displays the device status, response time, CPU load, memory utilization, interface statistics, and more. You can also set up alerts and notifications for any device or interface issues.
- Switch Port Mapper: This tool maps the physical port connections of your switches and shows you which devices are connected to each port. It also displays the port status, speed, duplex mode, VLAN information, MAC address, IP address, hostname, and more.
- Network Topology Mapper: This tool automatically generates a graphical map of your network topology based on the data collected by Network Sonar Wizard or Network Performance Monitor. It shows you the device icons, labels, links, subnets, groups, and more. You can also edit the map layout and properties to customize it.
Network Troubleshooting
Another important aspect of network management is to troubleshoot any network issues that may arise. SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 offers several tools for this purpose, such as Ping Sweep, Trace Route, Enhanced Ping, WAN Killer, SNMP MIB Browser, and Response Time Viewer.
- Ping Sweep: This tool pings a range of IP addresses and shows you which ones are alive or dead. It also displays the response time and hostname of each IP address.
- Trace Route: This tool traces the route of a packet from your computer to a destination IP address or hostname. It shows you the number of hops, response time, and hostname of each router along the way.
- Enhanced Ping: This tool pings a single IP address or hostname continuously and shows you the response time statistics and graphs. It also allows you to adjust the ping interval, timeout, packet size, and TTL.
- WAN Killer: This tool generates random traffic to test the bandwidth and load balancing of your network connections. You can specify the source and destination IP addresses or hostnames, port number, packet size, packet rate, and duration.
- SNMP MIB Browser: This tool queries remote devices for software and hardware configurations via SNMP. You can browse through the MIB tree structure and view the values of various SNMP objects.
- Response Time Viewer: This tool analyzes packet capture files from Wireshark or other tools and shows you the response time of each application or protocol on your network. You can filter by source or destination IP address or hostname, port number, protocol name, etc.
Network Security
The last but not least aspect of network management is to enhance the security of your network devices and data. SolarWinds Engineer Toolset 10.6 provides several tools for this purpose,
such as Port Scanner, Subnet List Generator,
Password Generator,
and Config Compare.
- Port Scanner: This tool scans a range of IP addresses or hostnames for open TCP or UDP ports. It also displays the service name and version of each port.
- Subnet List Generator: This tool generates a list of subnets based on a given IP address range and subnet mask. It also