L2 Physical

The L2 Physical perspective shows the cable-level shape of your network — which device is plugged into which port on which switch. It's built from LLDP and CDP neighbor data, so any device that reports neighbor information appears as a container in this view, with its interfaces and ports as nodes inside.

What you see

• Containers: Devices that report LLDP/CDP neighbors — typically managed switches and routers
• Nodes: Their interfaces and ports
• Connections: Physical links, derived from each side's neighbor table

What drives it

LLDP and CDP run on managed network gear. Scanopy reads those neighbor tables from two places:

• The device itself, over SNMP. When a host is queried with valid SNMP credentials, its neighbor table is pulled and used to draw links between interfaces.
• A network controller, over its API. Some managed switches collect neighbor data internally but don't publish it over SNMP — a walk of the LLDP MIB returns nothing no matter what credentials you use. Where the vendor's controller holds that data, reading the controller recovers it. See Set up UniFi discovery.

Both sources feed the same resolution, so a link reported by a controller and the same link reported by the device at its other end are recognized as one cable rather than two.

Devices that don't report neighbor data from either source simply don't appear here — that's expected for unmanaged switches and most endpoints.

When to use it

• Troubleshooting connectivity at the cable level
• Planning physical changes (port moves, recabling)
• Auditing port utilization and trunk configuration

See also: Credentials, Customizing Views.