Total Network Inventory – A Complete Inventory Management Solution

Total Network Inventory is a complete solution for managing network resources, including hardware and software installed on remote machines. It provides extensive inventory management features, reporting and PC auditing making it a perfect solution for today’s demanding corporate networks. Total Network Inventory provides a complete solution for network scanning without needing to have client-side software installed. Computers running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X operating systems can easily be scanned without the necessity for any software having to be preinstalled on the remote computer. The only thing you’ll need to be able to access the remote computer is the administrator password. This software allows you to scan individual nodes, the Active Directory structure or network address ranges.

Total Network Inventory provides a wide selection of advanced inventory management features. You can group assets, provide comments or attach additional information to your network information as it is reported. The report features offered by this software are equally impressive. Flexible and extensive reporting is provided in a range of different categories. You can build table reports and then copy, export or print them. A full-featured search function allows you to see the results before you have even finished entering information. Software accounting is also provided by Total Network Inventory. Once the network scan has been carried out, you will be provided with a list of all the software found in your network. A few clicks away are detailed reports which will provide you with information such as the number of copies of a program you have installed on your network as well as which computers they are installed on.

Total Network Inventory allows you to scan pretty much everything on your network including Linux- and Apple-based computers. Other devices connected to the network will also be scanned, provided that they support the SNMP protocol. The scanning feature is particularly clever and it’s also quick and easy to use. All you need to do is tell the software what to scan and then it will discover your entire network and its assets. It is also possible to scan nodes in a specific IP address range. You’ll see a list of workgroup computers and the domain structure will be extracted, showing you exactly what is connected to your network. You can then select discovered nodes, specify login names and passwords for them and much more. Scanning typically takes a few minutes and the data which is gathered is placed into the Total Network Inventory storage.

Using network inventory software is the ultimate way to keep track of large corporate networks. It assists with keeping software updated, maintenance of the network and much more. The only other alternative is to do everything manually, literally walking around the office writing everything down yourself. In today’s ever-growing business networks, this quickly becomes impractical and even impossible. Instead, you can try using Total Network Inventory which will allow you to audit all of the hardware and software on your network from the comfort of your desk.

Learn more about Total Network Inventory at softinventive.com/products/total-network-inventory and download a trial version today.

Monitoring printers using SNMP

I would like to share an interesting experience of using the SNMP protocol for centralized monitoring of printer availability and parameters.

My company does quite a lot of printing. The pool of printing units includes various printers and MFU large printers as well as medium and small SOHO (Small Office Home Office) class ones. All of them are network devices of predominantly two manufacturers – HP and Canon. About a year ago the company management set the task of collecting data for analysis of their functioning availability, downtime, workload, and consumption of paper, cartridges, and other consumables and spare parts. Besides, some data should be promptly submitted to the senior executives of both our internal providing services and external servicing companies.

In my opinion, collecting information from printer statistics pages every day is tiresome because there are rather a lot of printers in the organization. The option with parsing statistics web pages did not suit us for the reason of heterogeneity and the absence of static web addresses. I decided to use SNMP.

SNMP is a UDP-based protocol for control and monitoring. Almost all devices having a network interface support this protocol and allow using it to collect performance data. Data available via the SNMP protocol are also arranged in hierarchical order (OID). So it turns out that one can request the printer for an OID value with a definite number. Using special utility programs – server monitoring tools makes the monitoring of printers far more convenient.

Personally, I am using IPHost Network Monitor. This program allows an automatic search for all printers and other network-enabled devices (network discovery), carrying out data collection on the functioning of printing units, generating primary reports for subsequent analysis, and send timely alerts when performance or availability problems occur.

Monitoring system usage has shown:

1.The printer manufacturers try to keep to a uniform MIB structure and accordingly the group of OIDS (printer-accounting): 1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.3.9.4.2.1.1.16.1 will be common for all HP printers, which can be actually received via SNMP. There are such OIDS in it as: printed-media-duplex-count 1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.3.9.4.2.1.1.16.1.1.3 (duplex printing two-sided printing)
media3-page-count 1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.3.9.4.2.1.4.1.8.3.3.3 (A3 size printing).

2.There may arise a problem with getting specific information on required printer because OIDs can be different with different printer manufacturers. IPHost Network Monitor can request information on all possible OIDs for the printer and has a built-in MIB browser.

3.For device identification in the other company departments and just for clearness it is better to use the printer serial number, net name, IP as a monitor name.

IPHost Network Monitor deserves a special recommendation as a solution for printer monitoring. This program significantly simplifies the monitoring of printing equipment because of:

– supports printers of most manufacturers;

– does not require profound SNMP protocol knowledge;

– automatically scans the network and finds printing and other equipment;

– allows setting a real-time monitoring of the condition of network printers in real time;

– has an advanced notification system;

– has a web interface for remote control of availability and performance.

After implementation of paper consumption monitoring, I can see several steps to enhance the SNMP monitoring of printers in our company:

– monitoring for paper supply

– control print queues

– control the refilling of cartridges and consumption of inks and toners

– keep a record of consumables for copiers, scanners, and multifunction printers (MFP)