The Discovery

Subsystem
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•
Netmon Discovers network nodes.

•
Ovcapsd Checks for DMI and web
capabilities (Windows
only)

•
Ovtopmd Maintains the topology
and object database
•
ovet_bridge Transfers appropriate
nodes from ovtopmd to Extended
Topology.

•
ovet_disco Queries node
connectivity using special
MIBs

•
Pmd Receives and correlates
•
NNM uses a number of configurable background
processes to manage and track various elements in
the environment.

•
Each of these processes is responsible for a specific
aspect of NNM’soperation.

•
netmon is the process which is responsible for
identifying all the devices in the network.

•
Netmon performs the initial discovery of a device’s
existence and many of its standards-based features.

•
You can configure how much of your network
netmon discovers.
•
You may optionally provide netmon with a seed file
containing a list of nodes in your administrative
domain to define the initial management region of
the automatically-generated network map.

•
Without the seed file, netmon assumes that your
initial administrative domain is composed of the
network to which the management station is
directly connected. You may expand this initial
management region interactively by marking
additional networks as managed.
•
ovcapsd assists netmon in Windows Operating
System environments by off-loading some of the
capability determination for the discovered device.

•
Extended Topology takes a snapshot of NNM's
discovery and knits things together. Based on
NNM's seeding and its own internal intelligence,
Extended Topology then uses sophisticated
algorithms and further polling to establish a correct
model of connectivity at layer-2, along with
information such as VLAN connectivity. It resolves
conflicting information from various MIBs on a
device.
•
You can configure which devices are exported
from ovtopmd to Extended Topology discovery.
You can also control which higher layer services
Extended Topology monitors.

•
The Extended Topology path engine provides
NNM's netmon process and Event Correlation
Service with accurate layer-2 connectivity
information.
 Discovery Related Services
•
Netmon netmon polls SNMP agents to initially discover
your network topology and then detect topology,
configuration, and status changes in the
network. netmon uses special lookup files to help
determine correct IP topology behavior and
correct vendor and SNMP agent values.

•
Ovtopmd ovtopmd maintains the network topology
database. If the topology database
does not initially exist, ovtopmd creates it,
and netmon populates it with network objects
during netmon’s discovery of your network's
topology and automatic generation of the
map. Once it has been generated, ovtopmd controls
the topology database and updates specific records
based on information from netmon indicating
that
changes have occurred in the corresponding
•
Ovcapsd ovcapsd listens for new nodes and checks
them for the following: remote DMI
capabilities, web- manageability, and web
server capabilities. The result of the check is
stored in the object database. (Windows
only)
•
ovet_bridge ovet_bridge takes a snapshot of the
collection of devices that netmon has
discovered and passes that information into
the Extended Topology component for
further analysis.
•
ovet_disco ovet_disco and its many helper
processes re- query connector devices for
vendor-specific MIB information to allow
correct layer 2 connectivity and higher level
services interpretation. The Extended Topology
information is stored in the Extended