N.I.A. News

(Network Information Aggregator)

July 29, 2010

Much has changed with regards to the former NetMap/NetScan software. The name has officially been changed to N.I.A. (Network Information Aggregator) to more accurately reflect what this software actually does. It compiles, sorts and presents information on a network in an easy to read format to allow administrators to make intelligent and rapid decisions. This software is web based with a AJAX front end and python back end.

These changes allows the system to change and update the administrator immediately and to allow the administrator to react to potential threats or changes immediately.

Here is the latest screen capture from the N.I.A. alpha setup!

Concept

The goal of the NetMap project is to provide a simple to use web based system for mapping network attached appliances in a reliable and effective manner.

Right now this system is very basic and does not pick up on everything attached to a network. The largest difficulty in the test environment was actively locating Windows 7 machines.

The NetMap system is comprised of several scripts that generate a web page that the user logs in on to view the data collected about their network. There are two general functions to this system, one that collects data about the networked items and is comprised of a bash script that runs every 5 minutes or so through the cron daemon and the other function which is a collection of PHP scripts to format the information and post it to an Apache website.

The collector bash script depends on nmap and samba to locate and collect information on active machines on the network. This script may eventually be re-written in python to allow it to be more easily updated.

Here are several mock-ups put together in GIMP that show how the system works and what its going to look like: