Network Discovery Wizard

The first step in the work with WinAgents MIB Browser is registering your network devices in the program. WinAgents MIB Browser includes a special tool to make this task easier - Network Discovery Wizard. Its purpose is to find and automatically register all network devices that can be controlled via the SNMP protocol and meet the criteria you specify. You can open the Network Discovery Wizard either with its special button on the toolbar or via the Actions menu.

After you start the Network Discovery Wizard, you should select one of its working modes:

• All network nodes - searching for all network devices.
• Servers and routers - searching only for servers and routers.
• Nodes matching filter - searching for devices meeting the criteria you specify.

The next step in the work of the wizard is specifying the size of the network being searched. You can choose one of three variants:

• Discover only current network - search only the current local area network.
• Discover IP networks - search the network within the specified range of IP addresses. If you select this variant, you should specify IP addresses and masks of the network being searched. You can specify several ranges of IP addresses by adding them to the list using the 'Add Network' button. You can use the 'Delete Network' button to remove ranges from the list.
• Select distance - searching within the specified 'distance'. Here 'distance' means the maximum number of 'hops'. In other words, it is the maximum number of routers the signal from the computer where the program is installed goes through before it reaches the device being scanned. The number of 'hops' can be used to specify the maximum size of the network being searched.

After you specify the size of the network being searched, you should specify SNMP parameters for connecting to network devices. While searching the network, the wizard tries to establish a connection to devices it finds using the settings specified at this step. In case the connection is successfully established, the found device will be added to the list with results. Connection settings include the following parameters:

• SNMP Port - the number of the ports used for connecting, the default is 161.
• Timeout - the maximum time of waiting for a response during a connection attempt, specified in milliseconds, the default value is 1000.
• Community strings (separated by commas) - community strings used for authentication while connecting via SNMP versions 1 and 2. In case several communities are used on your network, you can separate them by commas.

If the mode of searching according to the specified filter is selected at the first step, you will have to specify your filtering criteria. You can see the window for specifying filtering criteria in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The window for specifying the filtering criteria.

To add a new condition, you should click the 'Click here to add new condition' link. This will add a condition string consisting of three parts. After a click on the first part you will be offered to choose the parameter used in the filter from the following variants. Node Name, Node Type, Location, Vendor, Description and Contacts. The second part is used to set the logical expression. It can take the following values: is equal to, is not equal to, starts with, does not starts with, contains and does not contain. The third part is used for entering the value to which the value of the parameter will be compared.

After you create several filters, you will be able to set logical relations between them. To do it, you should click the link at the top of the window ('Choose records where ... of the following apply'). You can use it to set the following relations: all (select devices for which all the conditions are true - logical AND), any (select devices for which at least one condition is true - logical OR), none (select devices for which no condition is true), not all (select devices for which at least one condition is false).

You can use the so-called brackets to create filters. To do it, you should click the circle next to the necessary line and select the Add Bracket item from the context menu. After that a new 'level' of filters appears where you can specify any number of criteria and set any logical relations between them. Using this method, you can construct as complex expressions as you like with a lot of 'brackets'.

Any condition or 'bracket' can be enabled and disabled. Use the checkbox next to the corresponding line for that. If the checkbox is selected, it means that the filter is active, otherwise it is disabled. Besides, you can completely remove conditions and 'brackets' from the list. To do it, you should click the circle next to the necessary line and select the Delete Current Row item from the context menu.

At the next step, the program searches the specified network for devices. You can stop the search by clicking the Cancel button.

After the program finishes searching, it offers you to select the devices that should be added to the device list from all the found devices.

After the described steps are over, the work of the Network Discovery Wizard is finished. After that all the devices that have been found and selected are placed into the MIB tree and become available for work.