Child / Parent Beacon Communication Flow

[dcopher]

When it comes to child / parent beacon communication from which node is the communication initiated.

Is this the same for agent / beacon communication?

[mrichardson]

Primarily traffic operates on a pull mechanism i.e. the child beacon will request updated policy, packages etc from the parent and will upload to the parent so this is all initiated from the bottom up.

Same applies to the agents, once installed they need to have a parent defined and will start an initial policy download post install and download a schedule which controls when next to contact the parent.

That being said, there are some remote tasks e.g. discovery and inventory rules which are triggered from the parent beacon and could run on the child if the child is one of the targets.

[mfranz]

Hi Matt,

I would like to add something. When looking specifically at the inventory data (data flow), I see it as a push config. Yes, the agent pulls settings and schedules, but inventory data is pushed upwards to the beacon. Then again the child beacon pulls settings and stuff from the parent beacon, but it pushes up inventory data.

Best regards,

Markward

[mrichardson]

That’s correct, I did mention that the child uploads to the parent so should have pointed out that is more of a push method.

The pull related more to my first comment, thanks for pointing out the confusion.

Therefore let me clarify and say that both push and pull are used in different scenarios.

[ChrisG]

The information in the following online help page provides some further detail here: Ports and URLs for Inventory Beacons