Automated discovery of a NAT'ed network

Question

We're setting up a remote monitoring service for an external customer, through a NAT-ed VPN. SolarWinds is on our side of the VPN.

The customer would like scheduled discovery of their network (weekly, or thereabouts) so that any new devices can be added to NPM.

I considered placing a laptop with Engineer's Toolkit on it, but Sonar can't be scheduled in that software.

Is there a way to accomplish the following without setting up a separate NPM installation on the customer's network:

* scan specific subnets on a weekly basis
* compare the results to the existing NPM database
* provide differences to the customer so that they can approve the addition of new devices to the monitoring contract
* (those new devices would be then added manually to NPM using the official NAT-ed address on our side of the VPN

Thanks in advance!

- Leon

adatole · Answer

Precisely. We can't scan from the NPM box because it's on our side of the VPN. We need to put SOMETHING on the customer side, scan from there, and then pull the results through the VPN to our side and compare to the db.

My first thought was a laptop running Engineer's Toolkit. But Sonar in that version can't be scheduled.

Thus my question.

Thanks!

- Leon

ecklerwr1 · Answer

I don't see how you are going to be able to scan the customer subnet from your side unless you already have the NAT setup to reach customer side.  If the NAT for these new devices might already be setup between you I suppose could scan the NAT address space on your side.  Otherwise you will have to have something to do the scanning on the customers subnet that you could run remotely.  Plain and simple if the NAT is not in place there's no way you are going to be able to reach the devices on the other side of the device doing network address translation.

Possibly your best bet would be to have a machine on the customer side you can remote into and run a scan locally on the customers subnet... then compare this to your list of customer devices to a previous scan and look for differences.  If the customer approves adding new devices then setup the static NAT for the devices and add your local NPM instance.