Communication Paths

Every system in a network provides or accesses various applications and services. With a large number of applications, services and processes as well as a large number of systems, evaluating their dependencies and relationships is very complicated.

For Windows and Linux systems, Docusnap captures the open TCP/UDP ports and existing connections to or from other systems during the inventory process. With each inventory, Docusnap expands and supplements this information and thus helps to build up a comprehensive connection diagram for networks over time.

The inventoried data is displayed for each system under the heading Connections in the Inventory tree.

A second view is below the heading Communication on the company level. In this view the associated systems are listed for all applications, services and processes.

Visualization

For the communication paths, reports or maps can be created under the heading Documentation to visualize the communication paths.

Click on the Communication node to open the Analysis tab and display the connections between systems and services. The type of connection is specified using different colors. In this overview, applications, services and processes are summarized as services.

There are basically two different types of connection, unidirectional and bidirectional connections:

• Unidirectional communication path: source system to service to target system
  • Source system to service = blue
  • Service to target system = green

• Bidirectional communication path: source system to service to service to target system
  • Source system to service = Purple
  • Service to service = green
  • Service to target system = Purple

• Special case: Source system to service to service to target system and source system to service to target system
  • Source system to service = purple
  • Service to service = green
  • Service to target system = purple -and
  • Source system to service = blue
  • Service to target system = green

Inventory also stores the date on which the connection was inventoried. In the Show Processes from field, you can select a date from which connections should be displayed in the map.