An apparatus and method for discovering and monitoring a collection of nodes in a downhole network may include receiving data packets originating from several downhole nodes. These packets may be read to extract a unique identifier and hop count for each of the nodes. This information may then be used to create entries in a network topology table corresponding to each of the downhole nodes. Each entry may contain unique identifier identifying the respective node, a hop count identifying a location of the node within the downhole network, and a direction identifier. The method may further include modifying one or more entries in the topology table having a conflicting hop count and direction identifier.