About passive entities
Passive layer 1 entities are user-defined entities that are additional entities that you want to see in your topology to have a complete picture of your layer 1 network environment. They are passive in that you cannot use Network Manager to discover or manage them, but you can still see them represented in topology maps.
You can use passive entities in various ways. For example:
- To show unmanaged nodes in your network.
- To show devices that are unmanaged by Network Manager. For example, a cable provider uses filters between network equipment to increase or modify signals. In many cases, these filters are not manageable, but they can be added to the blackbox service to show better granularity of the network.