Skip to content

Nautobot Device Discovery

Nautobot Device Discovery
An App for Nautobot, built by Network to Code.

Overview

Device Discovery is a commercial (licensed) Nautobot Application that helps network teams maintain an accurate and trustworthy source of truth by identifying what is actually running in the network and comparing it to what is documented in Nautobot. By automatically discovering devices through SNMP and SSH based prefix discovery, teams gain clear visibility into inventory gaps, stale records, and potential conflicts.

The core workflow involves scanning configured prefixes using SNMP and SSH, identifying reachable devices, and comparing discovered data against the Nautobot inventory. The app integrates directly with the Nautobot Device Onboarding App, so newly detected devices can be onboarded directly from the discovery results. This makes the app ideal for use cases such as:

  • Identifying network devices that are operational but not present in Nautobot
  • Detecting conflicts between discovered devices and existing inventory records
  • Tracking when a device was last detected and when the last successful connection occurred
  • Validating inventory freshness and overall inventory health

The app focuses specifically on inventory health and key communication protocols (SSH, SNMP). It is not a monitoring platform, a full network scanner like Nmap, a re-onboarding engine, or a general-purpose discovery tool for non-network systems such as servers or printers.

For detailed platform and feature coverage across both protocols, refer to the Platform Support Matrix.

Discovered Devices List View Discovered Devices List View
The Discovered Devices list view showing discovered devices.
Discovered Device Detail View Discovered Device Detail View
Detail view showing device information and discovery results.

To get started, check out the Installation Guide. You can then follow the Getting Started and explore practical use cases to see how to integrate discovery into your automation pipeline.

Documentation

Full documentation for this App can be found over on the Nautobot Docs website:

Learn More

Interested in learning more about Device Discovery? Fill out this form or email us at info@networktocode.com!

Support

For any support request, please open a ticket in the Network to Code customer portal.