Netgear Switch Discovery Protocol

NTDS (Netgear Switch Discovery Protocol)

Communication protocol
Purpose	Netgear level 2 switches management
Port(s)	63321/UDP, 63322/UDP, 63323/UDP, 63324/UDP

NSDP (Template:Lang-en — several network device families management protocol, disinged by Netgear.

Message structure

Common message header

Offset	Length	Meaning
0x0000	1	Proto version - always 0x01
0x0001	1	Operation code: may be 0x01 - read request, 0x02 - read response, 0x03 - write request, 0x04 - write response
0x0002	6	Unknown
0x0008	6	host MAC-address
0x000e	6	network device MAC-address (value 00:00:00:00:00:00 is used as multicast address, request will be proceeded by all devices, wich would receive it)
0x0014	2	Unknown
0x0016	2	Sequence number (value increments with every next request)
0x0018	4	Protocol signature NSDP
0x001С	4	Unknown
0x0020	N	Message body - the sequence of TLV records
0x0020 + N	4	End of message marker 0x0000FFFF

Message body record structure

Message body records are TLV(Tag Length Value) structures. Type field may be one of following values in the table(list in incomplete):

Type	Meaning
0x0001	Device model
0x0003	Device given name
0x0004	Device MAC-address
0x0006	Device current IP-address (may be unsupported by certain devices)
0x0007	Device IP-network mask (may be unsupported by certain devices)
0x0008	Router IP-address (may be unsupported by certain devices)
0x000a	administration password
0x000d	Device Firmware version (may be unsupported by certain devices)

Protocol flow examples

Network devices discovery (MAC-address an device model discovery):

   Host with MAC=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX from UDP-port 63321 or 63323 sending packet to broadcast IP-address 255.255.255.255 and UDP-port 63322 or 63324
   Header    @0x00000000 0x01 0x01 0x000000000000 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX 0x000000000000 0x0000 0x0001 0x4E534450 0x00000000
   Body      @0x00000020 0x0001 0x0000 0x0004 0x0000
   Marker    @0x00000028 0x0000FFFF

   EACH Device responds with message like
   Header    @0x00000000 0x01 0x02 0x000000000000 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX 0xYYYYYYYYYYYY 0x0000 0x0001 0x4E534450 0x00000000
   Body      @0x00000020 0x0001 0x0028 0x47 0x53 0x31 0x30 0x35 0x45 0x20*0x22 0x0004 0x0006 0xYYYYYYYYYYYY
   Marker    @0x00000058 0x0000FFFF

Device support for protocol

• GS105E ProsafePlus
• GS108E ProsafePlus
• FS116E (IP-network description and Frimware version TLVs are not supported)
• FS726TP (uses 633323 and 63324 UDP-ports for interconnection)

Devices firmware update

Device firmware update is made with TFTP protocol, but you need to send NSDP request to turn on TFTP-server first.

See also

• IP
• UDP
• MAC
• Netgear

External links

• Netgear official site
• openSource cross-platform toolkit for NSDP managed devices project site