Automatic Network Topology Discovery

With the development of computer network technology, more and more traffic, new nodes, new links are constantly introduced to the network, computer network, an increasingly large scale and complexity, computer network management technology to become a very important issue.In accordance with the definition of OSI, network management includes five functional domains:fault management, configuration management, performance management, security management, and accounting management. Five functional domains, but relatively independent, but also there was a link. The five functional domains, configuration management is the foundation, its main functions include network topology discovery, monitoring and management of network equipment configuration. The monitor and manage network equipment is based on the known network topology, so topology discovery is the basis for network management. The main purpose of the network topology discovery is to obtain and maintain the existence of nodes of information and the connection of information between them, and on this basis to draw out the entire network topology.Access network topology, the easiest way is to allow the network administrator based on the actual hand-drawn its topology, but now the network more complex and huge, and has been expanded, and the entity responsible for the functions in the network the more and more complex to track such a network takes a lot of time or effort, but also the characteristics of dynamic network topology, the network once the changes have to redo all the work, thus, automatic discovery of network topology is required. Currently, on the automatic discovery of network topology there are many, but the specific software to achieve much, and this in reference to a lot of research literature, the paper proposes a topology discovery algorithm based on SNMP and ICMP, Using SNMP and PING two protocol, and the use of one by one visit, to obtain equipment related MIB information value, to get the entire local area network device type, device port status, traffic and port connection device, and the entire network topology. The software can also convert standard RFC documents into a tree structure, convenientaccess to the device’s MIB.For the case of some devices based on network security considerations, shielding part of the MIB information, the software provides a hand-painted function.