Tip of the week 6
Know your network neighbors thanks to lldpd daemon
This week, i would like to present you lldpd. Actually, it's a useful daemon for GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS X developped by Vincent Bernat. The picture above summarizes the situation very well ;-).
Actually, this tool is a 802.1ab implementation (LLDP) to help you locate neighbors of all your equipments.. Thanks to this tool, you can discover your network neighbors (if they use LLDP/CDP/EDP/SONMP/FDP protocols) and advertise capabilities/identities of your network interfaces.
Installation & usage
lldpd is well documented, so you I can only advise you to read this documentation and follow the instructions to install it on your system.
Then you can use lldpctl or lldpcli (this one provide an interactive shell) to watch your network neighboors (pssst, there is a -f option for format, you can choose xml or json, it's very interesting for your script/backend UI) and configure your interfaces. The lldpd command allow you to debug/manage lldpd daemon.
RTFM now !
Example of output for lldpcli -> show neighbor detail (from the official doc):
# show neighbors detail
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interface: eth0, via: LLDP, RID: 1, Time: 0 day, 00:00:10
Chassis:
ChassisID: mac 00:18:f3:03:4e:06
SysName: dev-01.example.com
SysDescr: Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (wheezy) Linux 3.7-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.7.1-1~experimental.1 x86_64
MgmtIP: 192.168.20.127
Capability: Bridge, on
Capability: Router, on
Capability: Wlan, off
Port:
PortID: mac ea:b8:ab:aa:8c:da
PortDescr: eth1
PMD autoneg: supported: no, enabled: no
MAU oper type: 10GigBaseR - R PCS/PMA, unknown PMD.
LLDP-MED:
Device Type: Media Endpoint (Class II)
Capability: Capabilities
Capability: Policy
Capability: Location
Capability: MDI/PSE
Capability: MDI/PD
Capability: Inventory
Inventory:
Hardware Revision: System Version
Software Revision: 3.7-trunk-amd64
Firmware Revision: 2104
Serial Number: System Serial Number
Manufacturer: System manufacturer
Model: System Product Name
Asset ID: Asset-1234567890
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So i think this tool is very useful to simplify your data-center configuration
Go Further
LLDP on wikipedia
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