How Assets Discovery collect active NICs data
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
NICs need to be active with an IP assigned which is within the scan setting range
Assets Discovery pings all IPs in a scan setting range, and then scans the responsive IPs. Therefore NIC are scanned from the Network's side, and not from the hardware (Host Side).
So if a Nic is not connected to a Network, and does not have an IP within a scan setting range, the related infos will not be picked up.
Multiple active NICs for one remote host scanned
Discovery by default calculate the hash of the first NIC MAC address retrieved in order to avoid creating duplicate objects so If a remote host has multiple active NICs (with IPs within the scan settings range) all NICs will be scanned but only the first one will be used and added to the object.
Example:
Scan 00001 contains ip range 192.168.0.0/24.
- Scan 00002 contains ip range 10.0.0.0/24.
- Remote host X has 2xNICs active one in 192.168.0.0/24 range and one in 10.0.0.0/24.
- Scan 00001 finds Host X on ip 192.168.0.100, it uses a NetworkInterface.pat file to explore all Nics, will find all and note the first NIC for the Hash.
- Scan 00002 will find Host X on the 10.0.0.0/24, but 1st NIC MAC will always be the same. Therefore the same hash will be calculated, so the same Host X object will be updated and no duplicate objects will be created in Assets.
How to retrieve and collect in Assets info related to not active NICs for one remote host scanned
The information related to other NICs can be retrieved by the executed command added to a custom pattern. For example, ipconfig /all does return info about not connected NICs but no IP (MAC, State, description, etc.).
Discovery Tool can retrieve information that are:
- Accessible by any command in the command prompt.
- Saved in a registry Key.
- Saved in a file, in a fixed location.
For more info:
Please note that while we do provide info about how to develop custom patterns, developing or debugging those would be out of our support scope.