Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is a vendor-neutral Layer 2 discovery protocol, also known as IEEE standard 802.1ab. Vivinet Diagnostics uses LLDP in addition to CDP and SONMP to gather diagnostic information from a device’s management information base (MIB). Many networks run a combination, or hybrid, of CDP and LLDP, or SONMP and LLDP. In such situations, Vivinet Diagnostics queries the LLDP portion of the MIB and the CDP or SONMP portion for information regarding all neighboring Layer 2 devices for a particular device.
NetIQ has tested Vivinet Diagnostics with the following Nortel LLDP implementations: ERS83xx (versions 3.0 and later), ES425 (version 3.6), and ES325 (version 3.6).
Management TLVs must be enabled on the LLDP devices you want to monitor. In a device’s MIB, the LLDP data consists of sequences of short, variable-length information elements known as TLVs (type, length, value). The Management category of TLVs consists of the following TLVs, which are not stored in the MIB unless they are enabled:
Port Description
System Name
System Description
System Capabilities
Management Address
Use your device’s command line interface to enable Management TLVs. In general, the syntax for the command is as follows. Consult the documentation for your device for specific instructions.
lldp tx-tlv [port <portlist>] [port-desc] [sys-name] [sys-desc] [sys-cap] [local-mgmt-addr]