This would potentially be quite a large update to the current discovery system but would make it an extremely more powerful tool that can be made as complicated or as simple as needed by the administrator. Put simply, Network Sonar incorporating the logic system behind alerting. Something everyone will already be familiar with.
With the alerting system we already have the ability to query pretty much any piece of information about a node, interface, etc. Why not extend this to newly discovered nodes, this would allow us to automatically add nodes which fit the predefined criteria. For example, all "Null" interfaces could automatically be ignored. Custom properties could be set based on vendor or another property, to give yet another example if any Aruba equipment was detected, this could automatically be listed as being WiFi related and polling setup accordingly.
Instead of being given a list of of every changed and new node, having to trawl through them adding or ignoring various items this would instead be a summary. In which a list of all added/changed items which matched your criteria with any non matching nodes listed separately to be added manually and to allow the administrator to expand the rule set, further refining the process.
This leaves it totally up to the admin how complex to make the rules. One might simply leave the rules blank and do everything manually, others might setup rules similar to the following;
IF device model contains "ASA" AND vendor is "Cisco"
SET custom primary_service to "Firewall"
SET node polling to 60
SET node stat interval to 1
IF device type = Windows Server 2008
SET node polling to 120
SET node stat interval to 2
IF interface description contains "trunk"
SET polling to 60
SET stat interval to 1
ELSEIF interface description contains "access"
SET polling to 600
SET stat interval to 10
SET show unplugged as true
