BigFix agent communications

Customizations
1

(imported topic written by SystemAdmin)

Hello,

I have a couple of questions with regards to the agent communications on machines with multiple NICs/IP addresses:

  1. How does the BigFix agent determines which NIC/IP address to use for it’s communication? Is it based on the binding order of the connections on the particular machine?

  2. Is that selection dynamic (e.g. if I have a machine with 3 NICs/IP addresses and I unplug the one that is being used will the BigFix agent pick the second one and use it to continue to communicate with the BES server?) and configurable (e.g. can I specify a particular setting/flag during the agent install or post-install that will preset that value?)?

  3. Can you point me to some relevance code that will be useful to simulate the BF agent nic selection routine on a server to produce a retrieved property?

Thanks in advance.

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi ageorgiev,

The short answer is that the agent has no control and no idea which adapter/IP it is using… All this functionality is provided by the operating system. The BigFix Agent simply makes the appropriate API calls to say “I want to make a TCP connection to address ‘blah’” and the OS takes care of the interaction… It is the same process if you open your browser and type in the address.

Ben

3

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Thank you for the feedback, Ben.