What is Indexing?

Why index? Indexing gives you a comprehensive foundation from which your enterprise to optimize the running of its network and protect it from intended and unintended harm. Complex networks need to collect and process information for a variety of reasons.In the context of Asset Manager Asset Manager, discovery provides the benefit of turning the untouchable and abstract aspects of your network into something you can see, map, control, troubleshoot, change, and secure. Use it to discover leaks, find edges, mitigate risk, add services, and ensure that interlopers and guests who come onto the network, do no harm during their stay.

Ethos

Asset Manager Asset Manager came about as the result of more than 15 years of steady and disciplined development. Today's Asset Manager Asset Manager solution is rooted in the rigorous application of four core build values: Make it benign, scalable, fast, and authoritative.

Benign
Primum non nocere  or "First, do no harm." In all we do, our methods are non-intrusive, non-invasive, non-slowing, and non-debilitating to your network and its operations. Because the discovery process targets a wide expanse of network, both active and targeted inquiries are structured to run on the network in small, distributed chunks. Only those packets necessary to perform a task are released and the segment into which they are released is contained. This makes Asset Manager Asset Manager the heavyweight of lightweights.  Asset Manager is safe to use on large networks even during production hours. It doesn't add "noise" to the network and uses only properly formed packets that elicit benign responses.

Scalable
Our solutions operate on an enterprise scale. This means that Asset Manager Asset Manager can process big data in a way our competitor's tools can't. Our distributed architecture and enterprise-grade database--with its optimizers, parallels, indexing, triggers, and stored procedures--enable Asset Manager to handle and manage large amounts of data better.What's more, Asset Manager Asset Manager works without credentials and agents, so there's no need to install or update agents on any Asset Manager Asset Manager equipment. You won't need to provide anything more than a minimal list of SNMP credentials/passwords to generate results. With less work, you get benefits that scale.

Fast
Asset Manager Asset Manager achieves results quickly by sending the right set of packets asynchronously.This deliberate, asynchronous approach yields a significant reduction in the time it takes to process a target space.  

Authoritative
Asset Manager Asset Manager was expressly made to generate authoritative and comprehensive foundational data. It was designed to close the gap on what is known and unknown about devices on your network, and to close the gap between what is discovered and not discovered. Asset Manager Asset Manager is for companies like yours, that recognize that you can't secure what you don't know.These four qualities are expressed again and again in the architecture and engines of our various discovery methodologies and are key differentiators of Asset Manager Asset Manager in the marketplace.

Methods

Passive
Passive discovery methodology involves a collector presenting itself as a non-routing router, listening to ARP traffic, and requesting OSPF updates as they occur. In this method, the collector does not route traffic, so passive discovery has next-to-no impact on network performance. Passive discovery works within OSPF areas, so it is especially useful in understanding core domains. 

Active
In active discovery, Asset Manager Asset Manager assumes a priori knowledge of a target destination (i.e., CIDR, IP, or device) without empirical evidence of that target's existence. In this type of discovery, the ancillary network attributes are collected. This collection is augmented by the ingested results of passive discovery, which ratchets up the penetration of discovery to include investigation of every nook and fissure of a network. Active discovery of targeted networks is especially useful in providing accurate visibility at the edges of your network.

Targeted
Targeted system inquires take a known destination device and employ SNMP and other protocols to interrogate that location. Targeted system inquiries yield a rich cache of data on network equipment.

Types

Asset Manager Asset Manager offers a variety of discovery types.

  • Broadcast Discovery
  • OSPF Discovery
  • Path Discovery
  • Host Discovery
  • SNMP Discovery
  • Device Profile Discovery
  • Port Discovery
  • Leak Discovery

Envoys

Asset Manager Asset Manager's envoys of discovery are as follows:

Broadcast Listener
Listens on ARP/DHCP/ICMPv6 for IP/MAC addresses

OSPF Listener
Takes part in an OSPF routing network as a passive (non-publishing) router to discover routers, routes, and links (router-to-router associations/map edges)

Path Explorer
Runs trace routes to network targets using ICMP, UDP, and/or TCP

Host Explorer
Pings hosts using ICMP, UDP, and/or TCP

Target Rules

  • All IPv4 SNMP/OSPF routes with a mask >= 22 in the unroutable address space when the targetInternalRoutes setting is enabled
  • All targets configured in the collector configuration with a mask >= 22 in the unroutable address space when the targetInternalRoutes setting is enabled
  • All IPv4/IPv6 devices found via Broadcast, OSPF, and Path are targeted

SNMP Interrogator
Tests all discovered hosts yielded by any other discovery type for system MIB responsiveness

  • Uses a master SNMP credential list
  • SNMPv3 scanning is enabled and disabled via the Credentials list.

Target Rules

  • All IPv4/IPv6 addresses are targeted on all SNMP credentials.Tests SNMP-responsive devices for more extensive SNMP data including routing tables and interface tables. Target Rules uses one of the responsive community strings from the SNMP interrogator response.