The Network Probe option of the Eracent suite of products probes the network to accomplish the following functions:

Device Discovery

Device Discovery determines what devices resides on or are considered a part of the network. The Eracent Network Probe utilizes a strong set of services to perform Device Discovery including ARP Table Enumeration, ICMP Enumeration, LAN Manager Enumeration, Active Directory Enumeration, and HP OpenView Enumeration. Once a device is located by these discovery sources, the data about the device collected by that discovery source is passed on to the Information Querying process.

Information Querying

The Information Querying functionality of the Network Probe reads as many data elements as possible from the device using a selection of network protocols. In order to insure the highest integrity for the data collected, at least two data elements must be acquired during this phase in order to be considered complete. When all obtainable data elements for the device have been acquired, the completed set of data elements is passed to the Identification Management phase.

Identification Management

By default, any device discovered with a unique set of identifying devices is considered a “unique device.” During the Identification Management phase, customer defined rules allow the user to refine what is considered a unique device. The Identification Management phase applies the customer defined set of comparisons to identify the device elements important in the customer's environment. Once each potentially new device is checked against the ID Management rules, the data is either merged with another device which already exists in the Network Probe's equipment list, or added to the equipment list as a new unique device. The end result is a Network Probe Equipment List, accessible via the Enterprise AM web interface.