Software Discovery Tools

[ladymuck]

I know there's loads of products on the market but I'm having trouble finding one that can pick up remote machines connecting to the network via dial-up or vpn. Does anyone know of a product that can do this?

Cheers!

[pint]

I have a question about your question

Why do you care about how those machines are connected to your network, as long as they have an ip it shouldn't matter. I'm probably missing something here.

[ladymuck]

Not all products can pick up a machine that is connected to the network via a dial-up connection. I not only need to detect the machine's presence, there are a number of tools that can do that, I also have to be able to remotely connect to it to scan for installed software and return the data to the server. All without any noticeable performance degredation to the end user and no client software installation.

Does that help?

[darmstadt]

I take it then that these are systems provided by your company? I use VPN clients for a number of customers on a couple of my systems and there is no way I would want them to be running some scanning software on my systems to see what I have. I think this would be a breach of privacy.

[vetran]

depends

If your VPN / Dial up solution allows you to run a log in script then most products will work, if not you need to do a winlogon script and copy it up semi manually (i.e. scheduled every 5 minutes and check for a share.)

Cheap & good product is :

http://www.alchemy-lab.com/products/atn/

[ladymuck]

I take it then that these are systems provided by your company? I use VPN clients for a number of customers on a couple of my systems and there is no way I would want them to be running some scanning software on my systems to see what I have. I think this would be a breach of privacy.

It's something my client, not my company, is implementing. They need to scan installed s/ware to ensure license complaince. The desktops aren't locked down so all manner of junk is being installed in an uncontrolled manner. It's not going outside the client's network.

[xondo]

SystemHound

I use SystemHound to monitor Hardware and Software. Once the client is installed, whihc is a very small executable, it report back to the server everytime a machine connects to the network via VPN or DUN. I install the executable via logon script so any new machine can be picked up. You can do a 30 day trail.

[ladymuck]

Thanks for the suggestions, at least I have a starting point for comparison now.

[NoddY]

Don't forget SNMP can convey lots of info - although it's usually limited to data on uptimes, CPU load, disk space etc.

Also the DHCP lease file can show what machine attached to the network and when (assuming clients are requesting their logical addresses from it).