Software Alternatives & Reviews

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper VS RANCID

Compare SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper VS RANCID and see what are their differences

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper logo SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper

Automatically plot your network in minutes with network mapping software

RANCID logo RANCID

RANCID - Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ.
  • SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-02
  • RANCID Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-08

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper videos

Solarwinds Network Topology Mapper

More videos:

  • Review - LanSurveyor (MSc-IT)
  • Review - Automate Network Discovery and Mapping with SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper

RANCID videos

Puppet Perspectives - Rancid "Troublemaker" Album Review (feat. Dan)

More videos:

  • Review - Rancid Life Won't Wait Album Review
  • Review - Review: Rancid “Trouble Maker”

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper and RANCID)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Network Automation
35 35%
65% 65
Configuration Auditing
0 0%
100% 100
Log Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, RANCID seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 9 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper yet. Tracking of SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper recommendations started around Mar 2021.

RANCID mentions (9)

  • Cisco switch backup/restore?
    A decade ago I worked for a shop that needed to routinely back up 100+ cisco switches and routers and refused to pay for solarwinds. I setup a light weight freebsd vm to run this open source software: https://shrubbery.net/rancid/ (Rancid: Really Awesome New Cisco config Differ) and set it to scrape all the equipment every 12 errors. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Version control for network configs
    Anyways Rancid does support cvs, svn, and git. Though I have only used it with cvs. Basically what it does, is checks out the configuration, downloads the configuration with other information about the state of the device, commits the configurations(which only changed ones will be in the latest check-ins, and then it can send an email of the changes. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Management Software for Cisco Devices?
    RANCID - Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ monitors a router's (or more generally a device's) configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc) and uses CVS (Concurrent Version System), Subversion or Git to maintain history of changes. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • What all are you doing with Ansible?
    If you want to use this as an opportunity to learn Ansible, or you don't want to add another tool to the stack, this is a fine use case. Otherwise, I would consider using either RANCID or Oxidized for configuration backup. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Starting with python at 30
    Before I knew about RANCiD (https://shrubbery.net/rancid), I wrote my own Perl application to telnet into a Foundry Networks switch and TFTP its configuration to my computer so I could back it up. At a future employer, I rewrote another coworkers Perl application that collected SNMP values from devices and did stuff with it (forget what all I did then). Source: about 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper and RANCID, you can also consider the following products

Cisco DNA Center - Find and resolve network issues with Cisco DNA Center. Provides software-based network automation and assurance. Control and manage intent-based networks.

Unimus - Unimus is a Network Automation and Configuration management solution designed for fast deployment network-wide and ease of use. Unimus does not require learning any abstraction or templating languages, and does not require any coding skills.

Nmap - Nmap Free Security Scanner, Port Scanner, & Network Exploration Tool. Download open source software for Linux, Windows, UNIX, FreeBSD, etc.

Oxidized - configuration backup software (IOS, JunOS) - silly attempt at rancid

Auvik - Auvik’s network infrastructure RMM gives IT service providers better visibility, documentation, and...

GenieACS - A fast and lightweight TR-069 Auto Configuration Server (ACS)