Komodo Labs Forums

Slitheris Network Discovery => Slitheris Network Discovery - Support & General Discussion => Topic started by: aeccles on July 06, 2017, 04:37:55 PM

Title: Thank you for making an incredible tool
Post by: aeccles on July 06, 2017, 04:37:55 PM
Just wanted to say thank you for making such an incredible tool.

I use it almost every day.  I'm in the process (now in it's second year) of documenting a network with 1000's of devices connected to 100s of switches across 35+ IDFs in 5 buildings.  The amount of time it's saved me could never be calculated, but that's not the biggest point.  The real benefit is being able to KNOW what's on the network and then respond appropriately.  I've been able to identify countless network issues by finding PCs in VLANs meant for phones, finding IP addresses for security cameras that were "lost" years ago, documenting PC ages, etc etc etc.

I've used an extensive amount of network discovery and monitor tools throughout my career, but this is without a doubt the most valuable from a discovery perspective. 

Thanks!

Title: Re: Thank you for making an incredible tool
Post by: Komodo Support on July 07, 2017, 10:51:53 PM
Thank you very much for this!  Praise like this goes a long we to increase morale here.  Our goal the rest of this year is to greatly improve the scan speed and accuracy of device type identification.  As you may know, we plan to detect more than just switches, routers, printers, PCs and servers.  It's very difficult to do, so we definitely have our work cut out for us.

After an upcoming maintenance release, we plan to start work on a much faster ping sweep system, with large IP range support and a number of other unique and useful features we can't yet announce.
Title: Re: Thank you for making an incredible tool
Post by: JeffWilson76 on July 15, 2017, 02:12:41 PM
Quote
I use it almost every day.  I'm in the process (now in it's second year) of documenting a network with 1000's of devices connected to 100s of switches across 35+ IDFs in 5 buildings

That's a big campus!

Quote
The real benefit is being able to KNOW what's on the network and then respond appropriately.  I've been able to identify countless network issues by finding PCs in VLANs meant for phones, finding IP addresses for security cameras that were "lost" years ago, documenting PC ages, etc etc etc.

Here's the strange thing about Local area networks. It's rare that you get to build a 'greenfield' campus LAN where you can do it right from the start, using protocols like LLMNR or CDP to auto-provision devices onto appropriate VLANs. I've only been able to clean-sheet design a network once in my 20 year career....

Typically IT guys walk into brownfield campus LANs where the business has already sunk thousands of dollars into their copper & fiber networks and has zero incentive to rip & replace every switch and every reason to make modest/incremental improvements.

Oh the horrors I've seen: blue Linksys access points attached to server vlans, enormous broadcast domains with PCs, android phones, servers, voip endpoints, scanners/copiers and Access points with no segmentation whatsoever. I've even seen places where cleaning staff would unintentionally create a network loop by plugging a single cat5e cable into two network drops in the wall, which craters the entire layer 2 broadcast domain on a campus. I've got scars, let me tell you!

In my work slitheris serves as a sort of first responder tool...the patient is on the ground bleeding, can't breathe, and has multiple injuries, so I grab Slitheris and get to scanning the patient. Yikes, that's bad I think, as I watch the devices cascade down my screen. The neat thing is that after I've cleaned it all up and properly segmented things, Slitheris shows me that too, in a much more simple way that nmap
Title: Re: Thank you for making an incredible tool
Post by: Komodo Support on July 25, 2017, 10:09:27 PM
Thank you so much for your praise too.  We're working hard every day to improve and advance.  We re-read posts like this often because it makes us feel even better that we're doing something special.  We're looking forward to working with both of you to make Slitheris work great on larger networks.

We'd like to put out a little disclaimer though.  nmap a great piece of software for penetration testing, white/black/gray hat hacking, and network discovery.  After all, it's full name is "Network Mapper".  However nmap is also at the top of the list for black hat hackers, flagged by many anti-virus apps as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program), and therefore is not associated with Slitheris whatsoever.