netbox-ping 2.1.1

A NetBox plugin for pinging and discovering IPs

NetBox Ping

A NetBox plugin for pinging, discovering, and monitoring IP addresses directly from your NetBox instance.

Other plugins: NetBox Map · Website · Demo

Features

• Ping individual IPs — one-click ping from any IP address detail page
• Scan prefixes — ping all existing IPs in a prefix at once
• Discover new hosts — scan entire subnets to find and add active IPs not yet in NetBox
• Bulk operations — select multiple prefixes from the list view and scan/discover in bulk
• Auto-scan scheduling — configure recurring scans and discovery globally or per-prefix
• Per-prefix schedule overrides — three modes: Follow Global, Custom On, or Custom Off
• DNS resolution — automatic reverse DNS lookups with configurable DNS servers
• Ping Status columns — sortable status columns injected into the core IP Address and Prefix tables
• Status panels — ping results shown on IP Address and Prefix detail pages
• Background jobs — all scan/discover operations run as NetBox background jobs
• Dark mode compatible

Requirements

• NetBox 4.5.0 or later
• Python 3.12 or later
• ping command available on the NetBox server
• NetBox background worker running (netbox-rq)

Installation

From PyPI

source /opt/netbox/venv/bin/activate
pip install netbox-ping

From source

source /opt/netbox/venv/bin/activate
pip install git+https://github.com/DenDanskeMine/netbox-ping.git

Enable the plugin

Add netbox_ping to your NetBox configuration.py:

PLUGINS = [
    'netbox_ping',
]

Apply migrations

cd /opt/netbox/netbox
python3 manage.py migrate

Restart services

sudo systemctl restart netbox netbox-rq

INFO

If you are upgrading from V1 and getting migration errors, please run the following:

sudo -u postgres psql netbox -c "DELETE FROM django_migrations WHERE app = 'netbox_ping';"
sudo /opt/netbox/venv/bin/python manage.py migrate netbox_ping

Usage

New settings Page

Ping a single IP

Navigate to any IP address in NetBox. Click the Ping Now button to ping it immediately. Results appear in the side panel showing reachability, response time, DNS name, and last seen time.

Scan a prefix

Navigate to a prefix and click the Ping Subnet button to ping all existing IPs in that prefix. Or click Discover IPs to scan the entire subnet range and automatically create new IP addresses for any responding hosts.

Bulk operations

From the prefix list view, select one or more prefixes using the checkboxes, then click Ping Selected or Discover Selected to scan them all.

Custom Status badge

View results

• Plugins > Ping > Ping Results — table of all individual IP ping results
• Plugins > Ping > Scan Results — table of all prefix scan summaries
• Ping Status column — enable the "Ping Status" column in the IP Address or Prefix table column configuration

Auto-scan scheduling

1. Go to Plugins > Ping > Settings
2. Enable Auto-Scan and/or Auto-Discover and choose an interval
3. Set the Minimum Prefix Length to control which prefixes are scanned (default: /24)
4. The system job runs every minute and dispatches scans for prefixes that are due

Per-prefix schedule overrides

From a prefix's Ping Status tab, you can override the global schedule:

Mode	Behavior
Follow Global	Uses whatever the global setting is (default)
Custom On	Always scans at a custom interval, regardless of global setting
Custom Off	Never auto-scans, even if global is enabled

Configuration

DNS settings

Configure up to three DNS servers for reverse lookups in Plugins > Ping > Settings. DNS lookups are performed on reachable IPs to resolve their hostname.

Auto-scan intervals

Available intervals: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, every 6 hours, every 12 hours, daily, weekly.

Performance Tuning

Concurrent pings per job

Each scan job pings multiple hosts in parallel. The thread count is configurable in Plugins > Ping > Settings under Concurrent Pings (default: 100).

To go above ~240, you need to raise the file descriptor limit for the netbox-rq service. Add LimitNOFILE=65535 to /etc/systemd/system/netbox-rq.service:

[Service]
LimitNOFILE=65535

Then reload, restart, and increase the setting in the UI:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart netbox-rq

RQ worker count

By default NetBox runs a single background worker. To process multiple scan jobs in parallel, you can run additional worker instances. Copy the default service file to create extra workers:

sudo cp /etc/systemd/system/netbox-rq.service /etc/systemd/system/netbox-rq2.service
sudo cp /etc/systemd/system/netbox-rq.service /etc/systemd/system/netbox-rq3.service

Then enable and start the new workers:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now netbox-rq2 netbox-rq3

Development

git clone https://github.com/DenDanskeMine/netbox-ping.git
cd netbox-ping
pip install -e .

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — see the LICENSE file for details.

Support

• Open an issue on GitHub
• Check existing issues for answers