Troubleshooting

The following section provides Network Discovery troubleshooting tips. This section is designed to cover specific issues that you might encounter while using Network Discovery.

What happens if a device does not respond to a ping during the discovery process?

Network Discovery does not try to use SNMP with the device. If Network Discovery can still find out enough information about the device to create a DDR, it will create one. If the device is a computer and the ping times out, Network Discovery can still make a LAN Manager call to determine the device’s operating system.

What happens if Network Discovery cannot resolve the name of a particular IP address it has found?

Network Discovery will use the IP address as a string to represent the name of the device. Many administrators do not give logical names to subnets and network devices.

What happens if a user enters an incorrect subnet and mask?

If the values entered do not match an existing subnet, nothing will happen. If they do, Network Discovery will attempt to discover devices on that subnet.

What happens if a user enters an invalid DHCP server name or IP address?

Network Discovery will time out while trying to connect to the DHCP server and then log a status message to report this failure.

What happens if the SNMP community name provided has write privileges?

Network Discovery only reads information from SNMP devices, so these privileges will not cause any unforeseen problems.

What happens if the SMS site server has a static IP address?

If you are using a DHCP server, Network Discovery will not find it. In this case, specify the name of the DHCP server in the DHCP tab.

What happens if a site server has multiple NIC cards?

Network Discovery will view the site server as having multiple local subnets and, therefore, multiple local routers. It will perform discovery on all of them.

What happens if the discovery duration is not set long enough for Network Discovery to complete?

If Network Discovery receives a duration timeout, it considers itself to have not completed. In this case, it will log a status message to indicate that the timeout occurred and create DDRs for each resource:

• Whose IP address is within the subnets defined in the Subnets tab of the Network Discovery Properties dialog box.
• Whose subnet mask and IP address has been found.
• Network Discovery found before the timeout occurred.

If the Network Discovery server does not have the SNMP Service installed, will it still use SNMP?

Yes. Network Discovery has its own SNMP stack that it can use to discover devices.

What if an administrator specifies a DHCP server but Network Discovery does not appear to be utilizing the information?

This indicates that the SMS Service account does not have Domain User rights in the DHCP server’s domain. The service account can use a Pass Through Authentication account to access the DHCP server when a trust does not exist between the two domains.