hp toptools discovery white paper august 2001 a white paper from hp
Table of Contents summary...........................................................................................................................................3 first level discovery ............................................................................................................................4 ip discovery.......................................................................................................................... 4 IPX discovery ..............................................
summary Discovery is the process that HP Toptools uses to find and identify devices on your network. As discovery locates and communicates with devices, it stores the information retrieved in the HP Toptools database known as the Managed Elements Data Store [MEDS]. When the HP Toptools device manager is installed for the first time, an automatic discovery is initiated. The default discovery settings are to discover all devices on the network where the HP Toptools device manager is installed.
first level discovery ip discovery There are several types of first-level discovery services, all of which run concurrently. Individual services can be turned on or off in the Settings->Discovery->Settings tab. 1. The IP Discovery routine starts off by identifying the local IP address and the local subnet mask to derive the local IP network range. By default, the local IP address and default gateway will be discovered, even if only remote networks are selected to be discovered. 2.
ARP cache reading is governed by a registry entry. To disable it, use regedit to set [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HewlettPackard\TopTools\CoreComponents\Discovery\Settings\Services\Arp_Cache_Read] to 0. (Changing it back to 1 will enable it again.) 5. In addition to its functions of finding new devices and new MAC addresses, Discovery also uses the pairing information to merge IPX and IP devices based on their MAC addresses. Discovery also does IP address duplication detection at this point.
second-level discovery The next step is second-level discovery. This is where all devices from HP Toptools • enterprise products are first processed. 1. Discovery looks at SNMP, DMI, and WBEM devices. 2. It performs topology Discovery (ports and segments) on HP hubs and switches. Topology requires many iterative readings of the network information and repeated analysis. Because of this, topology generally takes much longer to run than first-level Discovery. 3.
If a hub, switch, or router has an SNMP agent and HP Toptools knows the correct community name, the device is classified as a networking device. Otherwise, it goes into "Others". Printers are classified as a printer. All UNIX workstations and non-HP servers are placed into the "Others" category, regardless of whether or not HP Toptools sees an SNMP agent or knows the correct community name.
