With autodiscovery, shown in Discovery process, the IP Manager takes IPv4 addresses that are obtained from discovered systems to find additional discovery candidate systems. The initial IP addresses that are available to autodiscovery correspond to the neighboring systems of the systems that are discovered through manual discovery. The autodiscovery method is useful when topology information is incomplete or unavailable, or when manual updates cannot be maintained.

Autodiscovery requires creating discovery filters, which are described in IP Manager User Guide. For systems that match a discovery filter and are added to the modeled topology, they too are probed for IP addresses of their neighbors. The autodiscovery cycle continues until no more new IP addresses match the discovery filters. The discovery filters, which are configurable, ensure that the IP Manager sweeps only the networks that the customer systems are configured to access.

Figure 1. Discovery process