Using the Switch Port Management Console

Two hierarchical lists appear on the Switch Port Management page, the Select Device Groups list on the right and the Devices, Interfaces, and End Hosts categories on the left. To begin using the Switch Port Management console, select any device group on the right-hand list. Each device group represents a data set from a selected group of network devices. Consider that some device groups (Routing, for example) have systems with ports that will not be managed or cataloged by Switch Port Management.

After selecting a device group on the right, choose either Devices, Interfaces, or End Hosts on the left. Then choose a menu option from the exploded list. For example, Devices has five menu items.

Note that The All Devices category is also a device group, and you can get a complete view of the switched network by selecting it.

The Capacity Summary – Ports appears at the top of the Switch Port Management page, indicating several basic pieces of information:

Total Ports: The number of switched Ethernet ports, in the selected Device Group, that are being managed by Switch Port Management. If All Devices is chosen, this counter represents all managed switching ports.
Free Ports: The count of ports most recently polled that show a link state of Down, having lost connectivity.
Free Ports %: The percentage of all managed switch ports in the chosen Device Group showing Down link state.
Available Ports: The count of ports that remained in a link state of Down for more than the prescribed time period. When a port is considered Available, it is deemed available for other network resources.
The number of available ports will always be less than or equal to the number of Free ports. Trunk, routed, and unlicensed ports also are not included in the SPM port counts.
Available Ports %: The percentage of all managed switch ports appearing as Available.
PoE Ports: The count of Cisco switched Ethernet ports running the Power over Ethernet switching protocol for IP telephony applications.

Choosing Devices Present shows the total of all switches' contributions to each of the six capacity categories. Choosing any other device group rewrites the Capacity Summary – Ports pane to reflect the subset of values for the selected device group.

Beneath the Capacity Summary – Ports panel, the Devices Present table appears displaying the data sets for all devices in the chosen data group. Each table row reflects a data set record obtained from LAN switching devices from a process called polling. The Devices Present table designation is for all devices in the chosen data set–not for all devices in the network.