Patent ID: 8565119

Claim:
A method comprising: each plurality of agent devices connected by a network querying at least one neighboring agent device using a MAC address of the neighboring agent known to each of the plurality of agent devices to obtain an IP address of at least one neighboring agent device; each agent device creating a neighbor address table comprising an IP address of the at least one neighboring agent device; a manager device querying one of the plurality of networked agent devices to obtain the queried agent device's neighbor address table; the queried agent device returning the queried agent device's neighbor address table; the manager device adding each IP address comprised in the queried agent device's neighbor address table to a network inventory; the manager device designating each IP address comprised in the queried agent device's neighbor address table as an unqueried agent device; a discovery process comprising: the manager device querying an unqueried agent device in the network inventory to obtain the unqueried agent device's neighbor address table using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP); the unqueried device returning the unqueried agent device's neighbor address table; designating the unqueried agent device as a queried agent device; the manager device comparing each IP address comprised in the unqueried agent device's neighbor address table to IP addresses comprised in the network inventory and adding each new IP address to the network inventory as an unqueried agent device; and iteratively repeating the steps of the discovery process until each of the plurality of agent devices in the network inventory is designated as a queried agent device.