ANI Minor Acquisitions

[milan.kulik]

Hi,

does anybody know what does the Minor Acquisitions description exactly mean?

On-line Help says:

"During major acquisitions, the ANI Server reads data from the bridge table of switches and the IP table of routers in the network and updates the end-user host information in the ANI database.

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During minor acquisitions, the ANI Server reads data from only those devices where a change has occurred."

What does the "change has ocurred" mean exactly?

Any bridge table change, i.e. one MAC address changed in a switch MAC table?

How does ANI compare without reading the MAC table from the switch?

Thanks,

Milan

[sachinraja]

Hi Milan,

Minor acquisitions is similar to status polling, where the ANI server polls to network devices which are already on its database. existing entries in the database are compared to the information on the network device (ARP,CAM etc) to see if there is any change on the device database. ANI server infact sees the MAC and the CAM tables from the switch and compares it with the ANI server database.

All new devices are added to the database only during major acquisition...

minor acquisitions are always done during working hours (default every hour).. major acquisitions are done per day...

hope this helps..

Raj

[milan.kulik]

Hi Raj,

do I understand correctly "device" means a managed Cisco device (router, switch) in this context?

And these devices are discovered by CDP and added to the database only during major acquisitions?

During the minor acquisitions only known devices are polled and their CAM table entries are compared to the database and if a new entry found, a new host is added to the User Tracking database?

So if I want to scan my network for new hosts connected to my current switches more frequently, I should decrease the minor acquisition interval?

Thanks,

Milan

[sachinraja]

yeah milan.. u are right.. u can decrease the minor interval. i think the default is 1 hour.. new hosts on the devices will be added during this scaan.. new devices will be added during the major scan.. major scan can be done once i day ...

Raj