* A look at Link Layer Discovery Protocol, or LLDP
Some help is on the way for those of you looking to ease some of your more mundane management duties.
Our Technology Update this week takes a look at the soon-to-be-ratified 802.lAB Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP). In a nutshell, the protocol promises to simplify corporate network troubleshooting and enhance the ability of network management tools to discover and maintain accurate network topologies in multi-vendor environments, our authors say (aallen@entarasys.com and Frattura@enterasys.com).
The idea is to let network management systems accurately discover and model physical network topologies. As LLDP devices transmit and receive advertisements, the devices will store information they discover about their neighbors. Advertisement data such as a neighbor’s management address, device type and port identification is useful for discovering a network’s topology, our authors say.
Network management systems can query data stored in LLDP-capable devices through SNMP. Using the collected data, a system can create a map of the physical network topology by examining what devices are neighbors of each other, and through what ports they connect to each other.
There’s more to it than that of course. For more on this topic see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/tech/2004/100404techupdate.html
