Viewing CDP Neighbors

The CDP Neighbors page (Device Viewer > Device/Network Explorer > CDP Neighbors) lists information from any Cisco devices that support and transmit announcements from the proprietary data-link-layer Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). The table lists all remote devices that have exchanged information with the current device using CDP announcements, including the local interface ID receiving CDP announcements, the neighbor's IP address, the neighboring device's DNS name and interface ID, the reported neighbor's "platform", which is the model of the CDP-supporting switch or router, and the Neighbor Capabilities, which indicates the basic functions of each CDP-neighboring device.

You can also select additional columns of information for detected CDP neighbors, including the following:

• VRF: The local interface's VRF, if applicable.

• Neighbor VRF: The VRF belonging to the neighboring interface.

• Network View: The network view belonging to the local interface.

• Neighbor Network View: The network view to which the neighboring interface belongs, if applicable.

• Neighbor Version: This shows the complete IOS software version for each reported neighbor.

• Neighbor ifindex: This is a Cisco-defined value for SNMP used as a unique identifying number associated with physical and logical interfaces.

• Neighbor MAC: This shows the physical-layer MAC address of each CDP-reporting neighboring interface.

Many device vendors do not support CDP. In those cases, they usually support the IEEE standard Link-Layer Discovery Protocol.