Easily Find Unused Ports on a Cisco Switch

if you’re managing a Cisco switch, you know the challenge of identifying ports that haven’t been used for a while. Here’s a simple command to quickly check for “free” ports—those that are either down or haven’t seen any activity in weeks.

To list all interfaces and their last input/output status, use:

show int | i proto|Last in

For a more targeted approach, showing only the down or unused ports for 6+ weeks:

show int | i proto.*notconnect|proto.*administratively down|Last in.*[6-9]w|Last in.*[0-9][0-9]w|[0-9]y|Last input never, output never, output hang never