The self-driving car has been a sci-fi staple for years. It would rock up when you need it, you’d tell it where you want to go and what time you have to be there and it would just get you there, by land, sea or air! And as we know, technology doesn’t sit still! We […]
In this blog post we are going to show you how we can use the API Clients created for IP Fabric and NAGIOS. We are going to work on a simple scenario where we want to create hosts discovered by IP Fabric into NAGIOS XI. There are already a few blogs on how to use […]
or ... "How Vulnerable is my Network?" I just need a firewall right? For the record, it's not enough anymore to add a firewall to your network to claim it is secure. Networking is more pervasive than ever. More devices are connected each day. And networks have become the foundation for more services and processes […]
The IP Fabric platform is a very unique and innovative system. It ultimately combines traditional approaches and new ideas, which may generate further misconceptions or simply misunderstandings. After hours or possibly days spent with first-time users of the platform, I decided to explain the most frequent issues or questions raised during the proofs of concept […]
Your business relies on IT to deliver services to your customer. But what happens when there is a failure, can you afford downtime? Whether or not you can afford it, you should ask yourself this question: how to manage network risk to maximise service availability? In this blog post, we are going to identify some […]
20 years ago, if you had asked someone in a senior leadership position what their key priorities were, the network would definitely not have featured in their list. For many, the network has traditionally been technologically necessary but strategically unimportant. Organisational processes were built on the flow of paper, of both the monetary and the mundane kinds, and connecting computers together over networks were just starting to become the […]
Back in 2017, a report by Gartner stated that the trends in network evolution were being outstripped by developments in the rest of the infrastructure, with a view to delivering business services in an agile, scalable, and resilient manner. 4 years on and with developments in pockets of the network via SDN deployment, it seems […]
BGP is famously known for being the routing protocol of the internet, but not only. A lot of companies are using BGP in their internal network. One of the main reasons for that: it allows great control and flexibility with routing exchange. As with any routing protocol and critical connectivity, we want to ensure we […]
As for the USA Basketball association, there are four main steps to a perfect shot! You have to have the right balance, elbow in, eyes on target (I assume this one is the most important) and follow through. Once you release the ball, there's no coming back. You stay in your inner self for a […]
As networks become ever more critical to the operation of your business, complexity continues to increase. So you need to be sure that your monitoring platform is genuinely giving you visibility of the network devices. IP Fabric can help you answer the question "Am I really monitoring all of my network"? Walk with me and […]
In my past two blog post, I called out very specific security use cases for I Fabric, today I’m going to go the opposite way and talk about two very common, dare I say it pervasive problems. Configuration Compliance OS Version control and standardization My first exposure to OS version control was leading up to […]
As networks become ever more critical to the operation of your business, complexity continues to increase. So you need to be sure that your monitoring platform is genuinely giving you visibility of the network devices. IP Fabric can help you answer the question "Am I really monitoring all of my network"? Walk with me and […]
In a world where security is getting more and more complex, how do you know what you’re doing is accomplishing what you want? Today we will discuss another IP Fabric Network Security Assurance use case. One that not only could make you more secure but also save you a lot of time and money. On […]
New Year. Two words that I was looking forward since pretty much the start of last year. As years go 2020 proved to be one of the most challenging that I have experienced, the signs for 2021 being similar are a tad ominous right now. But enough of this negativity, because if we take a […]
The prefix “pro” quite literally means “before.” If an individual is proactive, it means that they make things happen instead of waiting for things to happen to them. Thus, being proactive means being ready if something happens: the opposite of being reactive. When we think about network and security, being proactive entails the use of network and security […]
Recently I've found myself having conversations about just when and why network engineers should be considering a mode of operation we'll describe as "Network Automation". Networking folks are investing huge amounts of their own time learning about Python, APIs, and network device programmability to query and configure their network devices. But why? Automated Processes Organisations […]
In a world where security is getting more and more complex, how do you know what you’re doing is accomplishing what you want? Is that firewall rule actually stopping your applications or IP from reaching the outside world? Is your well-crafted micro segmentation policy dynamically adjusting to accommodate your mobile medical devices once they move […]
As a network manager in today’s world, we are expected to be time travellers and mind readers………………… let that digest for a second 🤔 We need to know exactly what has happened (even before your time) and what is going to happen. Baselining your infrastructure and creating an understanding of your environment which includes all, security […]
We are all looking for that chink of sunlight in the blanket of darkness, in a year which has felt pretty dark and miserable, expecting and anticipating the sun to come and brighten the days up seems to be in the distant future. The same can be said with the visibility of your network data. […]
In our last post, we discussed the complexity of the operational tooling ecosystem that we use to maintain and support networks. In particular we looked into the following areas: Configuration Performance Monitoring Event Management IT Service Management CMDB We discussed the gaps between the existing tools, and hinted that IP Fabric could help improve process […]
The network is a distributed system whose raison d'etre is to deliver applications to your users in a reliable and timely way. In order to keep your network up and functioning, manageable and supportable, adaptable and secure, you need to maintain a set of tools which take care of the myriad of different elements and […]
In every product conversation and demonstration, we are always at pains to point out that we discover and curate an incredible wealth of network data in our platform. That data is then available for you to query and visualise through the Web UI. And we always make the point that the Web UI sits atop […]
To grasp any technology in a standard manner, first the right command set has to be found. The command set provides initial ingredients in raw form, which have to be processed. The processing extracts and structures the variables in a unified network model. This is the spice of our recipe, the secret sauce which allows […]
If I were to say that you could:
- Identify BGP peering instability;
- Spot Single Points of Failure;
- Verify end-to-end QoS
- Track down OSPF area inconsistencies
- Align FHRP and Spanning Tree
- Troubleshoot multicast forwarding
- Look for firewall bypass scenarios
- Identify 802.1X configuration issues
- Find end-of-life equipment
- Spot where users are having wireless woes
and without having to write Python scripts, Ansible playbooks and DIY, what would you say?
As more organisations adapt their working practices to cope with an unpredictable office situation, so wireless networking becomes ever more important to allow access to networked services. Pervasive mobility is the name of the game with hot-desking and working from home being the requirements for more people than ever before. And so how do you […]
Managing the lifecycle of your network equipment is a vital part of maintaining the security of your IT environment. Being able to verify that the equipment which underpins your IT is supportable, maintainable and replaceable should it fail is fundamental. But so few organisations really own this vital part of the upkeep of their IT. […]
After presenting IP Fabric at Networking Field Day 23, a number of Twitter threads started probing at the idea of Intent-Based Networking (IBN) - is it simply a marketing term that vendors use to sell more gear or does it have a deeper meaning? And what impact does it have on the network team? Does […]
A lively debate sparked up after Networking Field Day 23, where we presented IP Fabric to a panel of delegates and hundreds of eager online viewers. Could we class our solution as a "Source of Truth" for the network? The conclusion was "Yes". And "No". So why the confusion and what did the question actually […]
Senovo and Presto Ventures lead the round, scaling IP Fabric’s operations and market reach, as the company grows 350% in year over year monthly recurring revenue. Prague, Czechia - Sep. 22, 2020 - IP Fabric, the leading provider of network assurance and intent-based network analytics for large-scale enterprise networks, has secured €3.5 million (apx. $4,1 […]
Why 802.1X? There was a time when networks were secure islands, used to connect PCs to services they consumed and each other. The network was protected from the outside world by a perimeter firewall: there was only one way in and out. With the explosion in wireless networking and the use of personal devices in […]
A network user - a senior manager in the business, in the process of writing a heavy report - knocks on the door of the security team's office. He has an urgent request, to access a server that sits behind a firewall. He speaks to the security engineer, who checks her security policy documentation. She […]
Operating and automating computer networks can become easy once we have all information we need. Then the asset management software plays a critical part in any action. It's the tool that should be collecting data about all network devices automatically and with precision.
Just what is multicast? How do you set up your network to handle multicast? And how do you troubleshoot it if it fails? Let's start from the beginning. Unicast Forwarding Typical IP packet forwarding is considered "unicast" - a communication is broken up into IP packets and sent from a single source address to a […]
Wireless LAN (Local Area Network) or WLAN access points are inevitably a stable part of enterprise networks. The number of connected devices has been growing exponentially during the past years. And the forecast says that more than 20 billion devices will be connected in 2021. There are many solutions on the market from standalone wireless […]
PRTG integration with IP Fabric's API is another beautiful example of functional synthesis. Network monitoring tools are and have always been the key part of network management. For some, it may be just testing availability with ICMP or collect interface and CPU stats with SNMP. But for many network engineers, this is simply not enough. […]
With new 3.6.0 we are not radically changing the story, we are just updating it. And in a very fashionable way, I have to say. In any new major release, there are typically new vendors and networking technologies supported. There are faster database queries, even smoother discovery processes than in previous releases. Or there may […]
The "typical" site LAN In most networks, a site LAN consists of a number of interconnected Ethernet switches in a regular partial mesh pattern. The topology typically enables high availability of the networked applications. We create redundant links which are not typically used but are available to take over should there be a failure. Users […]
OK, so The Business has given us the nod to proceed, now the fun begins right? Fire up VS Code and lets get programming!! Hold your horses! In the previous post, we considered the "Why" … we now need to consider the "How" before we just dive into the "What"! No automation project worth doing […]
Let's face it, as network engineers, we get excited about connectivity. We care about the cool technologies we get to play with to connect users to apps, "things" to data stores. However, fundamentally "The Business" doesn't care about switches and routers, circuits and routing protocols. The network underpins all of The Business's IT and without […]
What does OSPF do for me? Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a standards-based routing protocol for IPv4. It is used to advertise paths to a network prefix between routers. As a router receives advertisements for prefixes, so it creates a representation of the network topology in a database. It then runs a process using […]
Today we have some great news for Nornir users - a plugin for IP Fabric has just been released, allowing use of IP Fabric network inventory for Nornir automation! And as we understand that seeing is believing, we have prepared a free 1 month trial for up to 20 devices. Test it directly in your […]
Verifying Quality of Service is a complex task when delivering applications across a large network. It involves a detailed understanding of the behaviour of many different devices, often from different vendors. This post shows how IP Fabric can help with this onerous task. Quality of Service Network nodes, links and interfaces have a number of […]
The Cisco Meraki is a unique network equipment vendor that decided to move all management related functions to the cloud. It may sound not completely secure or unusual to some, but in 2020 the market seems ready for that. With Cisco Meraki, you can build pretty much any type of standard network infrastructure including wireless […]
Design for availability The fundamental purpose of a data network is to connect users with applications, data producers and consumers with storage. The most desirable feature of a network is to maximise availability of those services to the endpoints that consume them. In order to achieve that, we need to consider (amongst other things): performance […]
The ability to perform end to end path simulation quickly across complex network environments means fast response to any issues or current design process requirements. The main reason that computer networks are built is to enable communication between two or more endpoints and the whole ecosystem is created for sharing information as efficiently as possible. […]
There are many elements that contribute to the availability of services delivered across any network. Redundancy in the topology, coupled with resilience in the configuration are key. Routing protocols are used to manage that redundancy and failover to backup traffic paths should a failure occur in the active path. For this to work successfully, it […]
Week commencing 1st June 2020, and another minor release - IP Fabric 3.5.2 - is ready for deployment! Let's sum up what the latest release has to offer. Multicast updates The 3.5 version started with multicast support with routing capabilities and the impressive distribution tree simulation in diagrams. The new 3.5.2 release adds information about […]
If you ever wonder how to change settings with API in the IP Fabric, then this is the right reading for you. In the previous article, from our API series, we focused on the first steps with IP Fabric's API. It was all about how to authenticate and collect data from inventory. Today we will […]
Multicast routing and related implementations can be a real pain. If you want to make a network engineer nervous (and it doesn’t matter whether managing enterprise or service provider networks), just whisper few evil words “PIM”, “distribution tree”, “IGMP”. And if it’s not enough and you want to continue with fatality combo, follow that up […]
With the main focus on Cisco Meraki as another stepping stone towards API based discovery, the new IP Fabric version 3.5 is out in the wild. The added discovery via API is very important for future implementation of SDN technologies, cloud networks and it eventually opens access to more information on some security devices.
To read data from API directly from the IP Fabric platform is very simple. The best way to start is to have a quick look at our documentation. Even for anyone who's never done any testing before. It's very standard and it contains useful information about API endpoint, authentication options or response codes to begin […]
To point out only a few enhancements: there's a significant update for LDAP authentication within the tool, end to end path lookup is now available on the Cisco ACI environment and we now support the Quagga routing software suite in our system.
After a few weeks of intensive development, there is a new version of the IP Fabric, that improves the platform's scalability and resolves a number of bugs. This minor bugfix release follows a major 3.3 version completed just 2 weeks ago. The improvements modified the way how network change calculations are performed. Please don't forget […]
The network management platform is a universal tool, which should allow monitoring and configuring of all network devices. But there may be more pieces to the puzzle. As a matter of fact, not everyone understands the management in the same way. In the following article, we will try to unveil some of the options for network management and how well-targeted analytics can be complementary to the solution.
Ever since engineers started operating computer networks, they started to use network analysis tools to measure performance, calculate risks and improve visibility. As technologies in general evolved, so did the tools for their administration. However, it's become quite common that many operators stick to old-fashioned Command-Line Interface (CLI) only and avoid any automation.
There are plenty of free IP scanner tools out there which are capable of scanning entire IP address space and provide results. There are different tools that use different methods for discovery. But the question is, can we call them discovery tools? And how can any IP scanner improve the network discovery? Those are relevant […]
For those who anticipated new release of the IP Fabric platform, the time is finally here. The IP Fabric version 3.2.0 is out. It has been a great journey so far and the platform stabilizes its position on the market of various network tools as a strong partner to various companies across industries.
The Cobit stands for "Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology". Primarily it was mainly focused on auditing, specifically helping financial auditors navigate IT environments. Now it is the leading framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT. It includes breadth of tools, resources and guidance. Its main value is in leveraging proven practices to inspire IT innovation and fuel business success.
Network documentation is a very complex and thorough topic - there are many guidelines, theories and even books that can help us with the process of creating and maintaining proper documents describing the network. The concept and execution may vary, but the purpose of the documentation should be unique - to represent the current state and settings of the network and all of the respective components.
Today we will go through a quick demonstration of the IP Fabric platform and its main features. The IP Fabric platform is the network management system that helps companies to empower network engineers and teams to discover, verify, and document large scale networks within minutes.
Good news everyone, another version of the IP Fabric platform is officially out. The 3.1.2 version is not including any major updates or enhancements, but rather minor improvements and small features that directly respond to multiple clients' requests.
International standard or ISO 27001 certification is helping organizations to better understand network and security area administration. It also defines models for increasing network and security resilience and other features. To begin with, the network infrastructure has become more and more important for many organizations. Hence, nothing is more valuable than data being transferred between […]
Axians and IP Fabric are today announcing their critical go to market partnership which immediately offers local support and innovative services to Italian customers and will begin strategic development of integrated Network Assurance Services over the coming months. A combination of Axian’s leading ‘Best Monitoring’ network management services and the IP Fabric network intelligence platform […]
A network security audit is a systematic evaluation of the security of a company’s information systems or network intermediary devices. The secureness of the network is evaluated using a few different sets of criteria, including measuring how well the devices conform to a set of established rules. A thorough security audit typically assesses the system’s […]
IP Fabric and AD Consulting are today officially announcing their commercial and technical cooperation in the Italian market. The partnership represents great added value to their mutual customers as AD Consulting Group add Intent-Based Networking capabilities to their strong arsenal of VMWare Gold partnership, A10 Network Affinity Partner status and more. The mutual benefit is […]
With a growing number of customers and requests, the initial plans for minor bugfix release have been expanded into a major release which improves upon nearly all aspects of the product. Here we'll cover the biggest changes in the major release of IP Fabric 3.1.0. Customers can upgrade the installation via the administrative interface by […]
Jakub Kabat, Marketing & Communications Specialist, IP Fabric spoke last week with Joe Kershaw, Channel Lead, IP Fabric about the upcoming launch of Community Fabric the global ambassador program from the rapidly growing network intelligence and analytics platform vendor… here’s what he had to say:
As networks become increasingly complex, the job of network administrators becomes more and more demanding. To understand the sheer amount of effort that the role takes, you only have to look at the task of analyzing the enormous amounts to status information within a network.
Would you appreciate much faster end-to-end path lookup simulation on big networks, prettier diagram layout or more extensive routing protocol support? We thought so and that’s why we decided to create even more seamless experience through recent updates. Let’s summarize all the effort. Added protocol and technology support Special thanks to our Network Automation Architects, […]
IP Fabric platform can be considered a Swiss Army knife for network engineers, providing one with trustworthy network verifications. One of IP Fabric's functionalities is here to help you continuously check if the network is configured properly or not. Lets demonstrate this capability on one of the functionalities that would be typically configured by IP […]
The wait is over, IP Fabric v3.0 is HERE! 🎉🙌 Quite often, when a company pushes out an update, it’s more about their developers squishing a few bugs than actually giving you shiny new toys - I mean, features. This is not one of those updates. In our quest to help you empower your network engineers, […]
As the old saying goes, “the secret to getting ahead is to get started.” To help you start saving time with IP Fabric’s platform, I wanted to walk you through the initial setup process, step-by-step. Frequently Asked Questions But before we get to the setup guide, we’re going to tackle the questions we hear the […]
Today, it is our pleasure to announce new version of our IP Fabric platform. Version 2.4 is in a general availability release that extends our product capability in technologies usually found in datacenter and network edge environments, namely VXLANs and Multi-protocol BGP address families. Features — Protocols and Technology Support VXLAN For customers using Virtual eXtensible LAN […]
Now that we’ve covered the process flow in the previous part of this series, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty part of the work. If you follow these steps, you’ll eventually end up with a certain set of information, including a high-level design (HLD) document, access credentials, a list of devices with access information, and […]
Documentation is a critical part of any project or technical environment. If we don’t jot down some important information along the way, we end up repeatedly asking the same basic questions over and over again, completely draining our team members. We’ve heard from many team members that have admitted that the most annoying part of […]
Companies are spending big money on defensive measures against the outside attackers — investing into Next-Generation Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems and Proxies. The inner network, however, was considered safe place, where nothing bad can happen. This understanding has thankfully changed in recent years, especially with rise of mobility technologies allowing employees to work anywhere and concepts like […]
It’s been very fruitful last weeks and months, new releases of IP Fabric platform are leaving the factory at its pace. Very big thank to all our engineers and developers for new updates, well-thought upgrades and long hours spent on the project, it’s been a pretty challenging ride so far. That’s all for latest positive […]
Today, we are pleased to release the new version 2.3.0 of IP Fabric platform. This release assists engineers in having a more complete overview of their network by adding support for additional technologies that are especially seen in Internet Service Provider and enterprise Internet Edge environments — Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Port Mirroring and Network Address Translation […]
If you’re a network engineer chances are pretty likely you’ve encountered some form of this situation. You get a new job (either assigned to a new customer or a one-off) and are immediately expected to execute a specific task within the network without any previous knowledge of it. Sound familiar? The thing is, navigating these […]
Today, we are delighted to release the new version 2.2.9 of IP Fabric platform. This release assists engineers in having a more complete overview of their network by adding support for additional vendors, such as Arista, HP Aruba, Huawei and F5 loadbalancers. It also provides support for new routing protocol IS-IS and improves End-to-end Path […]
Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting, otherwise known as AAA, or Triple A. Many individuals who have had to implement AAA on a router or a switch most likely have little knowledge regarding the commands that they copy to the router configuration. Most will simply utilize the AAA configurations from another functioning router or switch. Today, we […]
The latest 2.2.8 version released very recently again brought new powerful features and updates to our customers. IP Fabric is continuously gathering feedback and request from customers and one of them was to be able to work with more network devices and vendors, specifically devices from Arista Networks. Arista Networks I have been in the […]
At IP Fabric we’re committed to helping network engineers with mapping and verification of their critical networks, undeniable part of which is helping to understand each issue and its implications. That is why we’re happy to welcome Orhan Ergun, a well-known industry expert, consultant, CCDE trainer, and a published author, to our Technical Advisory Board. […]
Today, we are delighted to announce a new feature loaded release 2.2.8 of our IP Fabric Network Infrastructure Management Platform — Engineering Edition. This release is full of new exciting features and improvements, ranging from a new routing protocol support — EIGRP and RIP, through additional technology verification for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) to improvements for the existing […]
Routing, one of the most important features in network world. It’s been at least a two decades since most of ISPs rely on Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) in their core, supported by Interior Gateway Protocols (IGP). Local area networks are running and routing with use of IGPs on their own and it’s already being utilized […]
As a follow-up for previously published tips for first network discovery, we’ll get into some of the details about using basic authentication features and some troubleshooting tips when it discovery itself fails. Configuring network infrastructure access is mandatory in IP Fabric from the start and we cannot begin discovery without it. We have to have […]
Every network is growing, every network is becoming more complex due to all the requirements coming from the technology evolution or customer needs, e.g. building the more reliable network connections, application-based routing, etc. And all these facts are the triggers for all the changes we are facing almost every day. Of course, there are small […]
One of the features that’s included in IP Fabric's platform from the beginning of time is variability of network discovery inputs. First of all is Discovery Seed, which creates an entry point for discovery. Another functional feature is Filtering, which narrows down to what to include and what to exclude from discovery and analysis. But […]
To begin with, IP network gateway redundancy has become a very standard high availability solution. In IP Fabric's platform it’s described as First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) feature that currently umbrellas HSRP, VRRP and GLBP protocol. I have prepared a little scenario in our virtual lab with a LAN switched network protected by a firewall […]
Juniper SRX is a wonderful firewall device with a lot of rich features. However sometimes the complexity of security policies may grow greatly with multiple embedded addresses or application objects, more virtual routing and forwarding instances, route leaks and so on. It can come to a point when managing all security rules and providing service […]
This week we released IP Fabric version 2.2.5 which focuses on improvements of network diagram workflow, significantly improving the depth of information provided in the diagram tooltips, and improving readability of the End to End path diagrams. We’ve also added pseudo-STP links, or MAC edges, to correctly interconnect Layer 2 and Layer 3 when discovery […]
If a user reports that a certain application is not working for them, especially after a migration or a change, how do you verify the connectivity? Finding a path in a complex network can be hard enough by itself, having to map active switching and routing forwarding and balancing decisions, but additionally mapping security decisions […]
Today we’re announcing the release of IP Fabric 2.2.4. A network security oriented release, the new version enables you to troubleshoot the paths through firewall clusters, to have deeper insights into routing convergence and redundancy, or to prepare or verify migration changes to 802.1X among other enhancements. We’ve started by improving the user interface to […]
Enterprise networks should never have Single Points of Failure (a.k.a SPOF) in their daily operation. SPOF in general is an element in a system which, if stopped, causes the whole system to stop. Single failure (or maintenance or misconfiguration) of any network device or link should never put a network down and require manual intervention. […]
Have you ever tried to find out why the dynamic routing protocol in your network is not passing specific prefix as expected? And the situation had not improved even though ad-hoc static routes were created here and there? Networking protocols are designed to be simple in general. However, they can create very complex state machine […]
I’m pleased to announce the release of IP Fabric® Platform 2.2. Continuing our mission of delivering more capabilities into the hands of the network engineers, this major release exposes all predefined verification checks and enables to edit them or to define your own. Each technology verification can also be added to the dashboard, which is […]
Network engineer/architect can use diagrams to speed up many of his routine tasks — from overview presentation of the network to the detailed troubleshooting of faulty data flow from the client to server. But regardless of the task type, there is always a requirement that the diagram uses the same “language” as other people do when depicting […]
The best way to get a quick overview of any network infrastructure is by viewing a diagram (or most likely set of diagrams). The human brain can receive essential information much faster when represented in graphical form. The downside is that manually creating a diagram can take a long time. And keeping a big bunch […]
Large enterprise networks are constantly changing. Even if no administrative or configuration change activity is planned, the network lives by itself — the devices and links are going up/down and the network protocols are changing their states. How can you find unwanted changes as soon as possible? The main goal in reactive network troubleshooting is to find […]
Many devices such as IP phones, wireless access points, IP cameras or even small switches may be powered via the data Ethernet cable (by one of the PoE standards). This approach saves a lot of issues with separate electric power infrastructure and eases device manageability (e.g. hard reset of the distant malfunctioning phone has never […]
The IP Fabric platform 2.0 is a major new version of the network engineer’s best friend. A number of big changes and customer feedback have made it into the release. From tracking all changes in the network to supporting more networking technologies, and going deeper into the technology stack than any other product. Combined Discovery […]
The IP Fabric platform is a network engineer's best friend when performing deep network audits. For example, to verify root placement for overlapping VLANs in a LAN, I would normally need to look through the STP roots, and painstakingly trace L2 links, reconstructing the topology of each instance. For example, to verify root placement for […]
The feature I’ve been waiting for since the beginning of my Network Engineering career is finally here: Dynamic Change Monitoring. It’s finally possible to know the answer to the age-old question “What has changed in the network since yesterday?” and actually get a definitive response instead of the usual “Nothing has changed”. And not just […]
Discovery of existing IP network devices and links is essential to proper network management and control. How can you perform the discovery with the minimal initial information required?
Overall state of the network often must be presented in condensed form to managers and non-it personnel. How can you create the reports focusing mostly on the risk and impact of the network state to users and applications?
Each network with multiple users should have a redundant gateway implemented as an exit point. For the end users, some form of first-hop redundancy protocol such as VRRP, GLBP or HSRP should be implemented. But it that really true in your network?
Since the invention of EtherChannels, link aggregation bundles provide a convenient way to increase capacity or reliability of network transport paths. How can you ensure that the traffic is properly balanced among links in a bundle and that individual links in a bundle are operating properly? As with many things in life, aggregation bundles are […]
Many problems in the current Ethernet layer 2 switched networks can come as a result of the behavior of the Spanning Tree Protocol and its derivatives. Its fail-open nature can render large parts of the network belonging to the same switching domain unusable. There are hints in STP operation before the major disruption happens which could be used as early warnings.
Not only network documentation takes a lot of time and effort to create, but it also becomes outdated as soon as you hit save and seems to always require an update at the time you need it most. So how can you document your network effectively?
Monitoring loss in a specific flow or service is precise but has a number of inherent disadvantages, such as that it must be explicitly provisioned, that the resulting measurement only tells information about a single service path, and that there is no specific information of where the loss occurred or what caused it.
