When not to use Bridge Tables

Bridge tables are used by NTM to discover connections and calculate connectivity. Selecting Don’t use Bridge Table information to calculate network topology eliminates the bridge table information from the connection calculations. Connectivity discovered using bridge table information may be less accurate then with Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) and Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), however, it is still a valuable source of data. Additionally, eliminating bridge tables may decrease the time needed to calculate connectivity.

OIDs that NTM needs poll for bridge table information are these:

Q-BRIDGE-MIB:

dot1qTpFdbTable 1.3.6.1.2.1.17.7.1.2.2

For BRIDGE-MIB:

dot1dTpFdbTable 1.3.6.1.2.1.17.4.3

Bridge table information has a much greater impact on Orion Network Atlas maps; therefore, if you will be importing maps from NTM to Orion Network Atlas we recommend you do not use bridge table information.