Network Discovery

IPHost Network Monitor allows you to create your monitoring configuration skeleton using automatic network discovery. The discovery process detects network hosts and identifies their resources. IPHost Network Monitor can discover hosts and services for the following protocols: ICMP PING, SNMP, TCP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, HTTP(S), FTP, SSH, DNS, and create the following traffic measurement monitors: SNMP Traffic Speed and Volume and WMI Traffic Speed and Volume. Also, for each protocol you can select additional custom ports to check. Monitors for databases, disk space, processor usage, and others can be added manually.

By default, the discovery process uses templates to search for various applications, devices and services running in your network. A template selected in the discovery settings is applied to a host automatically, so that the entire set of predefined monitors are created on the host.

The default monitoring and alerting settings allow you to start monitoring discovered resources with minimum changes. Regular rediscoveries can help you to track equipment presence and relocation.

An easy to follow four or five-page wizard helps you to specify network discovery parameters. You can start the wizard by clicking the Discover Network button on the program toolbar or from the File > Discover Network menu.

The first page appears only if you have Remote Network Agents configured in your monitoring system. The page allows you to select an agent to perform the discovery.

On the wizard’s second (or first, if you do not have a Remote Network Agent) page you can specify an IP range or list several hosts to scan for available networking services and resources. IPHost Network Monitor determines your network subnet mask and calculates the IP range automatically. With the “Add hosts to” setting you can indicate a host group for the newly discovered hosts. By default, hosts for which only PING monitor was discovered are added to the “Desktops and Notebooks” group, other hosts are added to the “Servers” group. With the “Poll monitors using” setting you can specify how IPHost Network Monitor will connect to the discovered hosts. By default, the “IP Address” option is used. The “Domain name” option can be useful for DHCP-enabled networks where IP addresses may change and hosts should be polled by their DNS names instead of IP addresses.

On the wizard’s third (or second) page you can select service types that should be detected during discovery. The current IPHost Network Monitor version supports discovery of hosts and network services using the following protocols: ICMP PING, SNMP, TCP (Telnet etc.), SSH, HTTP(S), FTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. Also, traffic measurement monitors can be discovered: SNMP Traffic Speed and Volume and WMI Traffic Speed and Volume. Besides, resource monitors (CPU, Memory, Disk space) are created using any of the supported technologies (WMI, SNMP, SSH). Make sure to indicate proper credentials on the next pages and configure access rights in accordance if you expect those monitors to be found. In the table third column, you can also specify a list of custom ports to be used in discovery. When Automatic Network Discovery starts for the first time, all the Monitor type checkboxes are checked by default. Any changes you make to the checkboxes are saved and will be used as the default state for all the further discoveries, either Quick Discovery or Scheduled Scan.

To speed up discovery the “Scan for other monitors only if host responds to PING” checkbox is selected by default. But if there are hosts on your network that don’t respond to PING and you want these hosts to be discovered you should unselect this checkbox.

If you want IPHost Network Monitor to start polling discovered monitors immediately after discovery, you should select the “Start discovered monitors” checkbox. Otherwise, the discovered monitors remain in a Discovered state and you have to start them manually.

The next page allows you to select templates that should be used to search for applications, devices and services running in your network. If an template is selected and the discovery process finds an application-specific resource on a host, it will apply the application to the host, i.e. it will create a set of predefined monitors to the host.

The next page allows you to select user credentials that will be used to access the resources during the discovery process and will be assigned to discovered monitors.

The last page allows you to set a rediscovery schedule for a given host list. You can set IPHost Network Monitor to do rediscovery every few hours or to scan the network at a specified time on selected weekdays.

After the discovery is configured click on the Scan button. The progress bar will indicate the discovery status, and the Stop button on the right of the progress bar allows to terminate discovery. You can review the discovered monitors and their parameters as they appear in Tree View during discovery. After the discovery is completed the report is sent to the $AdminMail address.

Afterwards you can also change the rediscovery schedule parameters from the Tools > Settings menu using the Rediscovery tab.