Network Discovery
Overview
Network discovery scans an entire subnet to find all devices and services. It goes beyond simple SNMP scanning — every live host is detected regardless of whether it supports SNMP.
How Discovery Works
Discovery runs in three stages:
- Ping sweep — sends ICMP pings to every IP in the subnet to find all live hosts, whether or not they support SNMP.
- SNMP probing — queries live hosts for system information (hostname, sysDescr, sysObjectID, device type) using the SNMP version and credentials you configure. Hosts without SNMP are still kept as discovered devices.
- Service detection — probes each live host for common services: SSH (22), HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), SMTP (25), FTP (21), DNS (53), MySQL (3306), POP3 (110), IMAP (143), and RDP (3389). All probes run concurrently for speed.
Running a Scan
- Create a discovery job with a subnet in CIDR notation (e.g.
192.168.1.0/24) - Specify SNMP version and credentials for the subnet
- Click Run Now to start the scan, or configure a cron schedule for periodic scans
- Progress updates live — shows IPs scanned and devices found in real-time
- Review results: each discovered IP shows hostname, system description, device type, and detected services
- Import individual devices or use Import All for bulk creation
Auto-Import & Service Monitors
When importing a discovered device, service monitors are automatically created for every service that was detected on that host. For example, if a host responds on ports 22 (SSH) and 443 (HTTPS), both an SSH monitor and an HTTPS monitor are created alongside the device — ready to start checking immediately.
Scheduled Discovery
Jobs can be configured with a cron schedule for periodic re-scanning. This is useful for detecting new devices added to the network. Combined with auto-import, new devices can be discovered, imported, and monitored without manual intervention.