Discover Your Network

Using a wide range of protocols and techniques, NNMi Spiral Discovery gathers a wealth of information about your network inventory, ascertains the relationships between devices (such as subnets and VLANs and virtual resource pools), and accurately maps out the connectivity between those devices. The NNMi Causal Engine determines the current status of each device (plus each associated interface and address within that device) and proactively notifies you when NNMi detects any trouble or potential trouble.

This dynamic discovery process continues over time. When things change in your network management domain, Spiral Discovery automatically updates information according to a schedule that you set. The topology maps always reflect accurate and timely information about any changes within your network. For more information, see How spiral discovery works.

The first step is to verify that your network environment supports NNMi's Discovery process: Prerequisites for discovery. 

Then establish the Spiral Discovery default settings: Establish global defaults for spiral discovery and Configure schedule settings

If your network environment includes areas that use network address translation protocols, NNMi can successfully co-exist with the following protocol types (see Overlapping Address Mapping):

• Static Network Address Translation (NAT)
• Dynamic Network Address Translation (NAT)
• Dynamic Port Address Translation (PAT/NAPT)

If your network environment includes areas with conflicting subnet configurations, NNMi can successfully apply subnet masks separately to each group of Nodes you identify with a Tenant configuration (see Configure tenants).

The NNMi administrator is responsible for the following:

• Decide which nodes NNMi discovers and how often NNMi checks for new devices in your network (see Configure discovery ).
• Specify which devices are the best source of information about your network (see Specify discovery seeds).
• Verify that NNMi has an accurate and complete understanding of your network environment (see Examine Discovery Results).
• Change the Discovery configuration as needed over time (see Manage topology).

Related Topics:

For a list of the types of things NNMi can discover, see About Map Symbols.

From the information collected, NNMi constructs a model of your network configuration in the database, and displays this information in the map views. See View Maps of Network Connectivity for more information about the available map views.

To restrict subsequent SNMP Communication for a node after it is discovered, see Restrict SNMP communication for a node.