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Switches normally don't report any IP-level information, and there is no direct way to convert a MAC address to an IP address.

The Port Mapper only receives a list of switch ports from a switch, along with MAC addresses connected to each port. To map MAC to IP addresses and then to host names, it does one of the following:

• If network scanning is enabled in the settings on the Discovery tab, it scans the entire local subnet and creates a lookup table of IP addresses associated with each MAC address. This can only be done in the local subnet, because the ARP protocol used for IP-to-MAC resolution is not forwarded by routers between subnets.
• If your router supports SNMP, its details can be entered in the Port Mapper. It then will query the router about the known IP-to-MAC address mappings.

Related articles:

Scanning non-local subnets and MAC addresses
Configuring SNMP MIB query for MAC address resolution

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