# FusionInventory agent network tasks

## Summary

The NetDiscovery task allows the agent to scan the network to find remote
devices, through nmap, NetBios or SNMP, and to identify them

The NetInventory task allows the agent to extract various informations from a
remote device through SNMP protocol

## Description

The NetDiscovery task uses the following methods to scan IP networks:

* ICMP scan, using nmap external command
* NetBIOS scan, using [[!cpan Net::NBName]] perl module
* SNMP scan, using [[!Net::SNMP]] perl module

Any device replying to one of those protocols will be discovered, with just
minimal information, such as mac address and hostname.

If the device replies to SNMP, an additional identification attempt is
performed, using the device system description (SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0) field.  
First, this value is compared to a database of known values (the SNMP
dictionnary). If there is an exact match, an SNMP description model can be used
to fully identify the device (model-based identification). If there is no exact
match, various rules are used to partially identify the device (rule-based
identification).

Discovered devices are then reported to the GLPI servers, and import rules are
applied.  If the device type (printer, network device, etc...) has not been
identified, they will be considered as 'unkown devices'.

The NetInventory task can be applied to any device already present in the
inventory, provided it is assigned an SNMP description model. If no such model
has been automatically assigned during previous discovery phase, it can still
be done manually though GLPI interface.

## SNMP description models

An SNMP description model maps specific device features (ports list, ink level,
etc...) with SNMP OIDs. Given than manufacturers often change those OIDs
between firmware releases, the same device may have to use different SNMP
description models depending of its firmware. This means than the agent will
only assign description models to specific hardware/software combinations, as
identified from device SysDescr value. No model automaticall assigned doesn't
mean than no one applies, but rather than no one is known to work in this
specific case.

The SNMP description models database is constitued by two elements:

* the models, each of them defined in its own XML file, which have to be
  imported in GLPI database before usage
* the dictionnary, mapping those models to known sysdescr values,  defined in
  another XML file, discovery.xml, which is used directly without prior import

Those files are all distributed with the FusionInventory plugin for GLPI, in
fusinvsnmp directory.

If the network discovery is unable to automatically assign a suitable SNMP
description model for your devices, your different options are:

* use the SNMP description model generation tool, included in FusionInventory
  for GLPI starting with version 0.83+2.0, to create a dedicated model
* try a newer snapshot of the database, available from
  <http://fusioninventory.org/snmpmodels>
* try to use another model that seems close enough

Only the first option brings some ensurance of full coverage of information:
using an unadapted model may perfectly result in partial results.

## Command-line usage

The fusioninventory-netdiscovery and fusioninventory-netinventory command line
tools allow to run the corresponding tasks without a GLPI server. However, they
still requires some data files shipped in the server sources (SNMP dictionnary
and SNMP description models). See the corresponding man pages for details.

