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How to search for wired MAC address by Prime Infra 2.1

Hello Tejas,

 

we have installed the Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.1 eval for testing purpose at a customer with about 250 Cat3850 Switches.

 

One of the most needed functions is to locate on which switch and port a mac address currently is active learned.

I have not really been able to identify the correct function and way to do this with PI.

 

Could you pelase give me a hint, how to locate the position of currently active mac addresses with PI. 

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thank you very much

Karl

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

You're welcome.

No one management tool does everything every customer expects. Even the "best" tool requires trained people following some sort of structured process in order to deliver value to the organization.

If I were asked to find a particular device I'd ask for IP address as well as MAC. If it wasn't already in Prime, in most campuses / enterprises having the IP address  would narrow down the number of switches it could be on considerably. I'd then do a quick check of ARP caches and MAC address tables to find the exact port.

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12 Replies 12

AFROJ AHMAD
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hi Karl,

 

Go to Operate >device workcenter >> select the device (check the check box next to the device)

 

scroll down you will few options like device deatils ,configuration .,images etc..

click on device details > go to interfaces and then you can see the MA addess and the interface state.

hope it will help

 

Thanks-

Afroz

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Thanks- Afroz [Do rate the useful post] ****Ratings Encourages Contributors ****

Hi Afroz,

thank you very much for your fast reply.

I have checked your suggestion.

When I go to the device and interfaces and Ethernet interfaces, I will get listed all interfaces of the chosen switch and I will see the interface own burned-in MAC address only. I do not see any client mac address.

I am searching for a way to see the client mac address connected to a port of the switch.

And.... since I do not know where the client MAC address is located, I need a way to search over all 250 Cat3850 access switches for a client MAC at once.

Is there any way to do such a search?

 

Thank you

Karl

 

 

Assuming you are doing discovery on your network, you can find any discovered client MAC address by just entering the address in the PI search box at the top right of the UI.

You can also navigate to details via "Operation > Clients and Users" as noted in this guide. If you have ISE integration you will also get usernames in addition to MAC / IP/ switch port etc.

Hello Marvin,

thank you very much for your feedback on this.

I knew this "client and users" view but this does only show about 40% of the real active mac addresses on our 250 switches.

And as far as I understand, this does not list the current real live active MAC addresses on my switches.

So if a user reports an issue and tells me his MAC address I need to be able to locate this MAC immediately online.

From my understanding PI would need to query all switches in live on my search request but not looking into its own local mac database which has for sure a gap with the live mac addresses on the switches.

Thank you and best regards,

Karl

Check the frequency set under:

 Administration > System Settings > Background Tasks > Wired Client Status

The default is 2 hours I believe. Prime always checks against its database of discovered information. It would not ever query all the switches in the network intreactively based on a real time user request.

Hello Marvin,

thank you for your answer. Have been very helpful.

Too bad that this kind of function is not what the customer expects.

Have a good time,

Karl

You're welcome.

No one management tool does everything every customer expects. Even the "best" tool requires trained people following some sort of structured process in order to deliver value to the organization.

If I were asked to find a particular device I'd ask for IP address as well as MAC. If it wasn't already in Prime, in most campuses / enterprises having the IP address  would narrow down the number of switches it could be on considerably. I'd then do a quick check of ARP caches and MAC address tables to find the exact port.

Hi Marvin,
I was reading your posts, and I noticed that I'm having a similar problem. When I go to Operate --> CLients And Users, i can't see the clients that are connected to an 802.1q trunk port.
My configuration is: The client is connected in access mode to an HP switch, which is connected to a Catalyst 2960 using an 802.1q trunk. Here I pass different VLANS. I can see the clients that are connected to the 2960 switch in access mode in other ports, but not the clients that are connected to the trunked port. When i issue the show mac address-table command on the 2960, I can see all the MACS.
Any help will be appreciated. My PI version is 2.1

You won't see clients on the HP switch as PI does not support getting the MAC address tables from it.

Thank You Marvin, that's what I thought, but I can see the MAC address on the 2960's CAM. I have dhcp snooping enabled on 2960 too. In the core, I have 2 Catalyst 6500 routing all the VLANS using SVI. All that devices are monitored using PI. Do you think it's still impossible to see the clients although the 2960 an the 6500 switches see the MACS and the IP addesses of clients?

Thank You!

Maksim Petlin
Level 1
Level 1

Hi all

The way to locate on which switch interface a mac address is active learned (via Prime Infrastructure 2.1):

(Lifecycle theme) Home -> Overview -> Client -> "Client troubleshooting" function. Insert a mac address into "Client MAC address" field and "troubleshoot" finds it and identify switch/interface which is connected to. 

bkoch1
Level 1
Level 1

Although it's not in PI, I find a wired network device by going to the core router and entering the following command: trace mac <mac> <mac>

This should respond with the switch name and port number. The only time it won't work on my network is if the host is inside the data center network, behind a Nexus switch. The trace stops at the Nexus switch.

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