The discovery support service passively monitors discovery responders in a multicast group. When discovery responders are activated or deactivated, indicating that their agent is starting or stopping, they send a multicast message about their new state. A discovery monitor object listens for discovery responder objects starting or stopping in the multicast group.
By registering listeners with the discovery monitor, a management application knows when agents become available or unavailable. The discovery support message for an agent that is being started also lists its connector and protocol adaptor.
A management application can use the discovery monitor to maintain a list of active agents and the protocols they support.