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 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.
With the IP Fabric platform, I can just grab the hostname of the device, and look it up in the device inventory to find the corresponding switching domain the device belongs to.
Click on the switching domain visualizes all overlapping spanning-tree instances. We can check the topology of a specific VLAN by adding the instance to the graph.
We can then search for root, and filter excess information to get a better understanding of the VLAN topology, including blocked links.
Thanks to graph math, we can instantly perform what-if scenarios, such as finding non-redundant links, displaying the location of the users, or adding a corresponding routing domain, to better understand communication needs, and see where the optimal root placement would be considering site’s edge.
We can also drill down into further details all the way to the virtual port level, to make a sound engineering decision and understand any potential risks.
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