Introduction
The Tetherbox device detection is quite sophisticated and is part of the "secret sauce" of how Tether make it easy to detect, configure and monitor devices across networks.
The Tetherbox will automatically detect if a device changes its IP, if services are enabled/disabled, if there are health problems on the device and more.
What methods are used to scan
Tether use a combination of standard scanning methods as well as internally developed methods to identify devices. Some of the methods include:
Pinging relevant IPs (ICMP).
Checking the ARP table of nearby switches (including a hop away).
Various broadcast discovery methods such as WD Discovery.
Sending API requests on specific ports such as 80, 443, 8080 and 553.
Sending SNMP requests to devices.
Traditional port scanning of specific ports of interest.
All of these are scheduled intelligently to find a balance between responsiveness for a logged in user, background operation and ensuring there is no significant load on the network.
What range are scanned
The Tetherbox will scan all these ranges automatically. If the Tetherbox finds a device on any of these ranges, it will attempt to find an unused IP and join that network automatically:
Ranges | Vendor |
192.168.5.0/24 | Typical for Milesight and others |
10.1.1.0/24 | Typical for QVIS/Adata |
192.168.254.0/24 | Typical for Hikvision static IP |
192.0.0.0/ 24 | Typical for Older Hikvision / Dahua |
10.10.1.0/24 | Typical with wifi equipment |
172.16.30.0/24 | Typical with wifi equipment |
10.12.5.0/24 | Typical for Pelco |
192.168.0.0/24, 192.168.1.0/24 | Usually the default for many routers |
192.168.88.0/24 | The static range Tether uses |
Can other ranges be scanned?
Yes. If for example you add a camera that is on a network range that the Tetherbox is not presently scanning, that range will automatically be scanned by the Tetherbox going forward.
You can also specify additional network ranges to scan by opening your Tetherbox offline interface and specifying the ranges there.
Caveats
Please note in order for the Tetherbox to be able to detect and monitor a device, it must be able to see the device's Hardware Address (MAC address).
If a network is set up to prevent this, or the device happens to be on the Internet, this will prevent automatic detection and reduce the monitoring capabilities.