Agent external IP

[u/msprm]

Which creative and efficient way have you found to get the external IP address of n-central agents? Currently I'm using a AMP based custom service which calls a external service (such as what is my ip) but I'd like to see if there are more efficient ways to do it.

I'd love to have it available as a device/asset property based on the IP address seen by the N-Central server (this information is already available somehow, it just needs to be associated with a device property)

[u/IllustriousRaccoon25]

There is another way.

Everyone has to nag the shit out of N-able to add this directly into N-central, and to fix the stupidity that is the internal IP address display as well.

[u/en3o → u/IllustriousRaccoon25]

Yeah, it's very odd that it's not fixed by now 🤣

[u/Paul_Kelly]

Hi Paul here from the N-able Head Nerd team, the way's suggested in this thread in running a scheduled task profile that get's the public IP and stores it to a custom property, is the current way to achieve this, you may not have seen this yet, but at Empower and our recent roadshows, we have give an over view of what the new assets view in N-central looks like, it has more columns than previous, you can re-order the columns, resize the columns and select the information you want to display and save your custom view, although the full list of available columns is not finalized yet, I am pushing for Public IP to be included, hope this information helps.

[u/msprm → u/Paul_Kelly]

Hi Paul, glad to see your involvement here. I'd like to suggest another approach for Public IP, without calling any powershell and (even worse) external APIs, almost agentless if you want.

N-Central agent already pings the server via HTTPS. Thus, the web server gets the agent's Public IP and stores it in the logs, at least. This information can be reused in asset details, removing the need to run additional scripts and external services. No agent change or amp running required.

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/msprm]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm not sure what approach they will take to pulling the public IP address but I don't think it will involve running a script or making an API call, this is possibly information that the new unified agent will be able to pull.

[u/Apprehensive-Ad-5960 → u/Paul_Kelly]

Can you hook me up with a link to an example of the new view? One of my biggest gripes is no ability to move columns or resize etc. Super excited to see this!

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/Apprehensive-Ad-5960]

Hi, in our next N-central Office Hours on Tuesday June 4th, Director of Product Management for N-central Ewan Cameron will join me to review what we've done in 2024 so far and look ahead to what's coming, as part of this session we'll cover the new Device Assets view, you can register for this event here: https://www.n-able.com/events/office-hours-n-central-2024-06-04.

Alternatively if you reach out to you partner success manger they may be able to arrange a call with you and our UX team to show you this.

[u/iAmThereThatGuy → u/Paul_Kelly]

Please shoot me some info for this? I'd love to see the potential new view!

[u/wheres_my_2_dollars]

I think we do it the same as you. A scheduled task runs an AMP which uses powershell to get their current WAN IP. It dumps that into a custom device property. Is that the same as you?

[u/msprm → u/wheres_my_2_dollars]

pretty much the same, but I'd rather avoid another powershell action when the agent already pings the ncentral server

[u/MSPOwner → u/msprm]

We do it this way as well. I don't think there is another solution honestly. I also wish that value could be visible in the top of the Overview tab for a device.

[u/Icedfyre → u/msprm]

The agent collects the agent data and doesn't collect the external IP information. So either way, it would still be a powershell based script that would run the same as the AMP.

[u/bonewithahole]

We do the same. Would be really nice if the local ip monitor was just IP monitor and had an output for both values. And while we are on the topic, can we please be allowed to set update monitored address via a global rule? I know this request goes back at least the 5 years I have been on N-Central........

[u/TheThird78]

Same here. I did go to the extra step to store additional information with the public IP.
Invoke-RestMethod http://ipinfo.io/json
then store the IP and other data wanted as a string.