Network Discovery

With automatic network discovery IPHost Network Monitor helps you to create a basis of your monitoring configuration. The discovery function detects network hosts and identifies networking services on them. IPHost Network Monitor can discover hosts and services using ICMP PING, SNMP, HTTP(S), FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and Telnet, plus you can select additional custom ports to check. Monitors for databases, disk space, processor usage, and others can be added manually. The default monitoring and alerting settings let you start monitoring with minimum changes. Regular rediscoveries help you to track equipment presence and relocation.

An easy to follow three-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.

On the first page of the wizard you can adjust an IP range that will be scanned during discovery or list several hosts you would like to scan for available networking services and resources. IPHost Network Monitor determines the subnet mask of your network and calculates the IP range automatically.

On the second page you can select the types of services that should be detected during discovery. The current version of IPHost Network Monitor supports discovery of hosts and networking services using the following protocols: ICMP PING, SNMP, TCP (Telnet etc.), SSH, HTTP(S), FTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. You can also specify a list of custom ports to be used in discovery in the third column of the table.

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

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

The last page lets you set a rediscovery schedule. You can set IPHost Network Monitor to do the rediscovery every few hours or to scan the network at a specified time on selected weekdays. You can also change rediscovery schedule parameters from Tools > Settings menu, the Rediscovery tab.

After completing the wizard please click on the Scan button. The progress bar indicates the discovery status and the Stop button near it allows terminating the discovery. You can review the discovered monitors and their properties as they appear in Tree View during discovery.