This page contains the answers to the frequently asked questions about the NIOS Network Insight feature.
Q. How long does discovery take? Is there any indication of when the first pass is complete?
A. Discovery is an iterative process when new devices are found based on active polling or data collected from already discovered devices. Discovery is constantly running (unless disabled by the user) in order to keep the discovered data relevant, and it is not possible to predict or tell when all devices are discovered. At the beginning of discovery, there is no collected data and active polling is usually not finished yet, so the first iteration either discovers no devices or discovers only those devices that the user explicitly added as seed routers.
To monitor the whole discovery process, go to Administration > Logs > Syslog. Many interesting logs from various discovery services can be found on discovery members. On the Grid Master, you can monitor messages about newly discovered (unmanaged) networks and newly found devices.
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A. You can add the necessary devices as seed routers. To do that, open Member Discovery Properties for appropriate members of the type Probe and add a device IP address in on the Seed tab. You can also specify such devices as /32 networks.
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If a device is added as a seed router, its type is considered a Router by default. After successful SNMP collection, fingerprinting, and other processes, Network Insight changes the device type to the correct one. However, if the device is not reachable or its type cannot be identified, its type may remain as Router. |
Q. How do I automate the discovery of new network devices? In other words, a new device is on the network and I want it discovered ASAP.
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Q. Are both SNMP and CLI required for interrogating devices? If so, what is the order of their operation?
A. SNMP is used at least to collect basic information about the device such as its name, model, and vendor. This information is required to enable CLI collection on the device. To find out which of if SNMP or CLI is used to collect specific data, see the table on the Data Collection
page page.
Q. How is the network discovery database cleaned up if I want to wipe all data and start again?
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Q. Why doesn’t my container have a First Discovered /or Last Discovered value when networks in the container have been discovered?
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White networks. These networks are currently managed under IPAM, converted to an IPAM network. You can provision and de-provision managed networks. When you manually create or convert an existing unmanaged network on the IPAM tab, this network is considered as managed. Otherwise, it is considered unmanaged. Managed networks are always white, and unmanaged are yellow.
In the screenshot, you can see that we created network 2.5.40.0/24, and it is white and managed. Grey and yellow networks were later collected from discovered devices.
Q. How is the management interface on an end host determined?
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