Discovery

Auto-Discovery for WISP Networks: How ICMP/SNMP Subnet Scanning Works

Manually adding every new CPE as it's installed doesn't scale past a few dozen devices. Auto-discovery is how the device list stays accurate without that being someone's daily chore.

Try it in the live demo →

What a discovery scan actually does

A subnet sweep pings every address in the configured range, then follows up with an SNMP query against anything that responds, to pull a name, type and vendor signature. Anything not already in the device list gets added automatically; anything already known is skipped.

Auto-linking to the nearest radio

A newly discovered CPE is linked to its nearest sector AP automatically, based on the subnet it was found on and existing site topology — this is what keeps the map and topology view accurate without someone manually drawing a line for every new install.

When to run it

After any install day — new CPEs show up in the dashboard without a manual add.
On a schedule (weekly is reasonable for most fleets) to catch anything that slipped through.
After a subnet or IP-range change, to make sure nothing got orphaned.

Where it gets things wrong

Auto-discovery is a convenience layer, not a source of truth. A device with SNMP disabled or a wrong community string shows up as a bare IP with no useful metadata — worth fixing the SNMP config at install time rather than relying on discovery to backfill it later. And auto-linking to the “nearest” radio is a heuristic based on subnet and site, not a guarantee — spot-check new links after a scan, especially at sites with more than one sector AP nearby.

From demo to production

In the browser demo, discovery runs against the simulated dataset. On a self-hosted deployment, the same logic runs a real ICMP/SNMP sweep against your actual subnet — same workflow, real network.