5.6 SUMMARY Network discovery can be customized in several ways. You can use a seed file to direct the discovery of your network. The seed file allows the administrator to define the portion of the network for NNM to discover and manage. You can also use the loadhosts command and the netmon.noDiscover file to limit the discovery of your network. Discovery can also be performed manually via the NNM GUI. Be aware that network discovery is bandwidth intensive and that it should only be performed at low network utilization times. Use netmon polling statistics to determine how well netmon is performing.Because NNM relies heavily on SNMP access to managed devices, you should collect and configure the community names for devices you need to manage. In order to retrieve SNMP information, NNM needs to be configured with the community name of every device. If a device does not respond to SNMP, the device will be interpreted as a generic computer and the information collected for that device is limited to up/down status and its IP address.Determine whether you need to manage across firewalls in your enterprise, and if so, what method you plan on implementing to manage across firewalls. Otherwise, NNM may discover a very simple and possibly not so useful network. |