Apparatus and method for IP and MAC address discovery at the process layer

摘要

A method and apparatus for discovering IP and MAC addresses by an application program in a network. The network includes a number of SNMP-manageable and non-SNMP-manageable devices. Active devices can be discovered by the discovery node through a serial pinging mechanism which populates the MIB of the discovery node with IP and/or MAC addresses of all the devices on the network. An SNMP agent on the network is then used to perform a GetNext request that returns to the process layer the IP and MAC addresses of the non-SNMP manageable and SNMP-manageable devices.