In order for WhatsUp Gold to properly discover and identify devices, each device must respond to the protocols that WhatsUp Gold uses during discovery.
To discover that a device exists on an IP address, WhatsUp Gold uses the following methods:
If a device does not respond to ping or TCP requests, it cannot be discovered by WhatsUp Gold. We recommend ensuring that all devices respond to at least one of these types of requests prior to running a discovery.
After WhatsUp Gold discovers a device on an IP address, it queries the device to determine the manufacturer and model, components (such as fans, CPUs, and hard disks), operating system, and specific services (such as HTTP or DNS). To gain this information, WhatsUp Gold uses SNMP or WMI data from individual devices.
We recommend that important devices be configured to respond to SNMP requests. For information about how to enable SNMP on a specific device, see Enabling SNMP on Windows devices in the WhatsUp Gold Online Help or consult the network device documentation. For information about configuring SNMP on network devices, you may also want to view the WUG Guru video How to enable SNMP on a Windows server.
Alternatively, WhatsUp Gold can gather information about Windows computers using WMI. In most cases, however, the information available via WMI is also available via SNMP. Because SNMP requests are more efficient than WMI requests, we recommend using WMI only when SNMP cannot be enabled or does not provide the same information as WMI.
Note: If a firewall exists between WhatsUp Gold and the devices to be discovered (or if the Windows Firewall is enabled on the computer where WhatsUp Gold is installed), make sure that the appropriate ports are open on the firewall to allow WhatsUp Gold to communicate via SNMP and WMI. For more information, see Troubleshooting SNMP and WMI connections in the help.