Scheduling Discoveries In Multi-Site Networks - 3Com 3C15500 - Network Director User Manual

Configuration 713
Restricting the device types to Only IP devices in the Discovery Options
pane of the Network Discovery wizard will reduce the total number of
devices represented in the map, but will not reduce the number of
devices that will be queried for feature, configuration and topology
information. As a result, selecting this option will neither reduce the total
amount of traffic generated by the network discovery process nor speed
up the network discovery process.

Scheduling Discoveries in Multi-Site Networks

Scheduled network discoveries provide an automated way of keeping the
map up-to-date with the changes in your network. See "Scheduled
Discoveries" on page 106 for more information on how to schedule
network discoveries.
Regardless of the discovery options selected in the Network Discovery
wizard discovering remote sites will generate some level of traffic over
the WAN links in your network.
Scheduled discoveries provide a method by which you can minimize the
impact that the discovery of remote sites has upon normal inter-site
communications on your network, by allowing you to schedule
discoveries to take place during quiet periods on your network, such as
overnight.
Note that, as with monitoring poll rates, the more frequently you
rediscover your network, the more requests 3Com Network Director will
make to the devices on your network. It is important that you take this
into consideration when determining the scheduling of network
discoveries. If you are running 3Com Network Director on a single site
network, or if your map only covers the local site, then you may be able
to rediscover the network every hour without much impact upon other
users of the network. However, on a multi-site network such a frequency
may have a serious impact upon your WAN links, and so it may be
necessary to restrict your rediscoveries to once a day, every midnight. If
your network has a fairly static topology then it may be enough to have
scheduled discovery run once a week, every Saturday at midnight.
On completion of the Network Discovery wizard, a Network Discovery is
immediately run for the subnets selected in the wizard. If you have
scheduled a Network Discovery and wish to delay the discovery of the
subnets selected in the wizard until the next scheduled Network