I have created a device template based on the existing device created by Auto-Discovery. As I want to have the basic monitoring sensors on my device, I just created the template with Ping, SNMP Disk Free, SNMP CPU Load and SNMP Memory sensors for my device. But I actually deploy the new device from the template I created it also picked SNMP Traffic sensors like Ethernet Traffic, Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface Traffic, Ethernet-WFP Native MAC Layer LightWeight Filter Traffic, Ethernet-QoS Packet Scheduler Traffic and Ethernet-WFP 802.3 MAC Layer LightWeight Filter Traffic sensors automatically added to my device.

  • Why does PRTG add those sensors although I have only one NIC? And what is the difference between them?
  • Do we really need them for traffic monitoring with PRTG?

Thanks in advance.

Article Comments

Hello Tyla34,
thank you for your KB-post.

That's the actual NIC's that your operating system (the target device) reports. That's very common actually, for instance, this is the list of interfaces available on a system with 1 physical NIC and a Hyper-V switch (Required when using Hyper-V):

1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.1"Software Loopback Interface 1
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.2"Hyper-V Virtual Switch Extension Adapter
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.3"Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.4"Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.5"Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.6"Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.7"Microsoft Kernel Debug Network Adapter
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.8"Hyper-V Virtual Switch Extension Adapter-Hyper-V Virtual Switch Extension Filter-0000
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.9"Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter-WFP Native MAC Layer LightWeight Filter-0000
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.10"Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter-QoS Packet Scheduler-0000
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.11"Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter-WFP 802.3 MAC Layer LightWeight Filter-0000
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.12"Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM-WFP Native MAC Layer LightWeight Filter-0000

Every device will have at least one Loopback interface plus the actual Interface/NIC. But some operating systems (In this case) will generate several "hidden" auxiliary interfaces. The operating system's documentation will most likely tell you what these are.

You can usually manually "pick/identify" the relevant adapters, in this case:

1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.6"Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM
1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.3"Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter

This name will match the "Device Name" displayed on the Operating System under "Network Connections". When using the Auto-Discovery PRTG avoids "non-relevant" interfaces by only adding interfaces which have traffic counters (IN/OUT) above 0. But in some cases these interfaces will also have accounted for traffic and will be added by auto-discovery. The other interfaces can be safely deleted/removed from monitoring.

Best Regards,
Luciano Lingnau [Paessler Support]


Nov, 2016 - Permalink

Hi Luciano,

Thanks a lot for your answer. Is it also possible create device template for future auto-discovery only with that two sensors instead of removing the rest manually?


Nov, 2016 - Permalink

Hello Tyla34,
thank you for your reply.

Since the Traffic sensor dynamically scans for "active" interfaces, this is not possible. As soon as a single SNMP Traffic Sensor is added to the device template, PRTG will automatically scan for all "active" interfaces when doing the auto-discovery with this template. There's no way for PRTG to distinguish "real" for "logical" interfaces.


Best Regards, Luciano Lingnau [Paessler Support]


Nov, 2016 - Permalink