MNet Suite
Michael Laforest <mjlaforest at gmail dot com>
The MNet Suite is a collection of tools written in Python for network professionals.
The tools are focused on Cisco devices.
If you use any of these tools or find them useful please consider donating.
| Donation Method | Address | QR Code |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | 1HY3jPYVfE6YZbuYTYfMpazvSKRXjZDMbS |  |
| Bitcoin Cash (BCH) | 1FkcNB86LP7WBtgkWeqWX81tyam67gqDiP |  |
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| Graph | Crawls a network and builds a diagram based on CDP and LLDP neighbor information. |
| TraceMAC | Attempts to locate a specific MAC address by recursively looking it up in switch CAM tables. |
MNet Suite can be installed through Python's pip.
# pip install mnet
mnet.py graph -r <root IP>
-f <file>
[-d <max depth>]
[-c <config file>]
[-t <diagram title>]
[-C <catalog file>]
The above command will run the graph module and generate a network diagram.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-r <root IP> |
IP address of the network node to start on. |
-f <file> |
The file that the output will be written to. network.png will create a PNG file. |
-d <mac depth> |
The maximum depth to crawl into the network starting at the root node specified by -r |
-c <config file> |
The JSON configuration file to use. |
-t <diagram title> |
The title to give your generated network diagram. |
-C <catalog file> |
If specified, MNet will generate a comma separated (CSV) catalog file with a list of all devices discovered. |
mnet.py tracemac -r <root IP>
-m <MAC Address>
[-c <config file>]
The above command will run the TraceMAC module and trace a MAC address through CAM tables.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-r <root IP> |
IP address of the network node to start on. |
-m <MAC Address> |
The MAC address to locate. Can be in any form. Ex: 11:22:33:44:55:66 or 112233445566 or 1122.3344.5566 |
-c <config file> |
The JSON configuration file to use. |
mnet.py config
The above command will run the config module and output a standard config to stdout.
Use this module and redirect stdout to a file in order to create a new blank config file.
# mnet.py config > mnet.conf
The toolset uses a JSON configuration file for common parameters.
{
"snmp" : [
{ "community":"private", "ver":2 },
{ "community":"public", "ver":2 }
],
"domains" : [
".company.net",
".company.com"
],
"exclude" : [
"192.168.0.0/16"
],
"subnets" : [
"10.0.0.0/8"
],
"graph" : {
"node_text_size" : 10,
"link_text_size" : 9,
"title_text_size" : 15,
"include_svi" : 0,
"include_lo" : 0,
"include_serials": 0,
"get_stack_members" : 0,
"get_vss_members" : 0,
"expand_stackwise" : 0,
"expand_vss" : 0
}
}
| Block / Variable | Description |
|---|---|
snmp |
Defines a list of SNMP credentials. When connecting to a node, each of these credentials is tried in order until one is successful. This allows crawling a large network with devices that potentially use different SNMP credentials. |
domains |
Defines a list of domains that should be stripped off of the device names. For example, if a switch is found with the name SW1.company.com, the above example will only show SW1 in the output. |
subnets |
Defines a list of nodes that should be allowed to be discovered during the discovery process. If a node is discovered as being a neighbor to a node currently being crawled, the neighbor will only be crawled if it is in one of the CIDR ranges defined here. Therefore this list defines the subnets that are allowed to be included in the discovery process, but does not itself define the range of devices to be discovered (i.e. mnet will not do a sweep across all IP addresses in the defined subnets). |
exclude |
Defines a list of nodes that should be skipped entirely during the discovery process. Since the node is skipped nothing beyond it will be discovered. |
graph |
Defines specific values used to change graph attributes. Detailed below in the Graph block table. |
Graph block
| Variable | Type | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
node_text_size |
integer | 10 |
Node text size. |
link_text_size |
integer | 9 |
Link text size. |
title_text_size |
integer | 15 |
Graph title text size. |
include_svi |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes will include SVI information. |
include_lo |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes will include loopback interface information. |
include_serials |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes will include serial numbers. |
get_stack_members |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes will include details about stackwise members. |
get_vss_members |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes will include details about VSS members. |
expand_stackwise |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes belonging to stackwise groups will be expanded to show each member as a node. |
expand_vss |
bool | 0 |
If set to 1, nodes belonging to VSS groups will be expanded to show each member as a node. |
expand_lag |
bool | 1 |
If set to 1, each link between nodes will be shown. If set to 0, links of the same logical link channel will be grouped and only the channel link will be shown. |
The graph module starts at a defined root node and recursively traverses neighboring devices (discovered via CDP and LLDP) until a defined depth is reached. Data is collected using SNMP.
MNet will attempt to collect the following information and include it in the generated diagram:
- All devices (via CDP and LLDP)
- Interface names
- IP addresses
- VLAN memberships
- Etherchannel memberships (LACP only)
- Identify trunk links
- Identify switched links
- Identify routed links
- BGP Local AS
- OSPF Router ID
- HSRP Virtual IP
- HSRP Priority
- VSS Domain
- Stackwise membership
MNet's Graph module attempts to include all of the above information in the diagram in an intuitive way. The keep the diagram clean, the following are used:
- Nodes
- Circle nodes represent layer 2 switches.
- Diamond nodes represent layer 3 switches or routers.
- If a node has multiple borders then either VSS or StackWise is enabled.
- VSS - Will always have a double border.
- StackWise - The number of borders denotes the number of switches in the stack.
- If the configuration specifies, VSS and Stackwise nodes will be grouped in larger squares.
- Links
- Links are shown with arrowed lines. The end with no arrow is the parent and the end with the arrow is the child, such that the arrangement is parent->child.
- If a link says P:gi0/1 , C:gi1/4 then the parent node's connection is on port gi0/1 and the child node's connection is on port gi1/4.
- If the link is part of an Etherchannel the etherchannel's interface name will also be shown. Since an etherchannel interface is locally significiant, a P: and C: will also be shown if available.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
The below example shows a trace for MAC address 00:23:68:63:75:70 starting
at node 10.10.0.3. The MAC address is found on switch IDF3_D on port
Gi0/11.
# mnet.py tracemac -r 10.10.0.3 -m 0023.6863.7570
MNet Suite v0.7
Written by Michael Laforest <mjlaforest@gmail.com>
Config file: ./mnet.conf
Root node: 10.10.0.3
MAC address: 0023.6863.7570
Start trace.
------------
IDF1_A (10.10.0.3)
VLAN: 1
Port: Gi1/3
Next Node: IDF1_B
Next Node IP: 10.10.0.2
------------
IDF1_B (10.10.0.2)
VLAN: 1
Port: Gi0/24
Next Node: IDF3_D
Next Node IP: 10.10.0.6
------------
IDF3_D (10.10.0.6)
VLAN: 1
Port: Gi0/11
------------
Trace complete.
Q. My diagram is too large. I only want to diagram part of my network.
A. Check out the config options subnets and exclude. You can specifically exclude CIDR's if you do not want them included in your diagram.
In addition, suppose you wanted to prune part of the network off and only display the rest. You can add the IP addresses of the first node to be pruned to the exclude list in the config file (ex: 10.55.102.33/32), then run mnet graph from the new root node. As mnet crawls outward and reaches the first node that you pruned, the exclude list will prevent mnet from including it and mnet will not continue crawling in that direction.
Q. My diagram is still too wide. What can I do?
A. Try to use the Graphviz unflatted command line program to reformat the generated dot file.
Q. Where is the config file?
A. If you need a config file you can generate a new one with # mnet.py config > mnet.conf .
Q. Who are you?
A. I'm a network engineer with a background in programming. I write mostly in C. I wrote wiiuse, a small Nintendo Wii remote library which became somewhat popular among the homebrew developers, and a multithreaded realtime syslog analysis and alerting daemon. I work for a small company and wrote MNet on my spare time so if you like it and want to donate I'd really appreciate it!