I keep seeing interfaces labeled WAN Miniport (PPOE), WAN Miniport (PPTP), WAN Miniport (L2TP) and others on Windows servers as listed resources in Orion. What are these?
I am no programmer, but as I understand it Miniports are basically driver created subfunctions that a device in Windows has. WAN Miniports usually show up on a network interface for each of the base driver’s supported additional connection techniques over a WAN (PPoE, L2TP, PPTP, Etc.). Since they are not “real” it seems that Windows Server 2008 and beyond assigns each of the subfunctions a new unique ID on each Windows reboot. This causes SolarWinds to detect them as a “new” interface during discovery that follows a reboot.
So they don't need to be monitored then?
If you are using a server's NIC to create an LT2P link, a PPoE link, or some other layered connection; then yeah you might want to monitor them. But based on my understanding, I think not monitoring is probably the right choice. We add all of ours to the ignore list and do not monitor any of them.
