Network Discovery Overview

The Network Discovery module discovers machines and devices on a network, identifies their components and displays analysis charts of real time performance.

Scanning begins once the Network Discovery client--called a collector--is installed, using a machine with an existing Kaseya agent. Unlike LAN Watch, which is limited to a maximum of 1024 IP addresses, the entire subnet is scanned. Once the collector is installed on a subnet Network Discovery requires no further configuration.

Discovery of a machine or device—both hereafter referred to simply as a device—-begins by revealing the network configuration for that device. Configuration attributes include the subnet the device is on, its IP address, the device's open ports, and whether or not the device is SNMP enabled. If the device is SNMP enabled, Network Discovery performs an SNMP walk, this time identifying the status of SNMP objects and instances found on the device. If necessary, you can set or reset the community name of SNMP devices.

You can click any active SNMP object/instance supported by a device and get a real time display of the most commonly used performance-monitoring metric for that object. Once discovered, SNMP monitoring continues automatically.

Network Discovery's scanning and data requirements are very small. NMAP--a secure, lightweight scanning utility--performs command line scans of the LAN every two hours for rapid retrieval of network object attributes. Network Discovery uses a second utility called RRDtool to provide automatic monitoring and graphic display of SNMP-enabled devices. Graphic results are plotted vs time into day, week, month and year graphs. RRDtool uses a "round-robin database" (circular buffer) design so the system storage footprint on the collector remains constant over time, no more than 500 kb per SNMP device.

Use Network Discovery for:

• Host and Device Discovery - Identifying hosts and devices on a network, for example listing the hosts which respond to pings.
• Port Scanning - Enumerating the open ports on each device.
• OS and Hardware Detection - Remotely determining the operating system and some hardware characteristics of network devices.
• SNMP Discovery - Identifying active SNMP objects and instances on SNMP-enabled devices.

Note: See System Requirements.

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