RouteExplorer™ Tutorial -- Visualization

View complex routing hierarchies by abstracting or drilling down

Route Explorer can discover, display and monitor the largestnetwork topologies.  The followingfigure shows a large multi-area OSPF network.  While the core of the network is complex, it can be viewedin detail by zooming in, as seen in  

Figure 1.

 

 

Figure 1

For clarity of viewing, each individual area can also beselected and opened in a separate topology map window, as seen in Figure3. 

 

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 4shows a complex service provider network. This network has a hierarchy of routers with a backbone, customer edge,data center and peering border routers.

 

Route Explorer can simplify this complex network for easy viewing.  The two examples in Figure5show the same network topology, but simplified. At left in the figure, RouteExplorer has hidden the leaf node networks. If you use naming conventions foryour routers, Route Explorer can further simplify the network display based onthe router’s names. The second view (at right in Figure5)shows only the “backbone” routers. 

 

   

Figure 5

HOW TO:

Zoom in to the topology map:

  1. Open the topology “DemoEnterpriseAMar03”.
  2. Click on Zoom In button on the side bar menu
  3. or select an area on the map to zoom by clicking and dragging a rectangle
  4. Right click in the rectangle to show pop-up menu
  5. click on Zoom.

 

Open IGP areas and ASes in separate toology maps:

  1. Display Topology Explorer pane – click on “TEx” button in the sidebar
  2. select the area or AS to open in a separate window (e.g. “Backbone”) by clicking on it in the hierarchical topology list in the TEx pane, and make sure it is highlighted
  3. click on “New View” button in TEx pane

 

Hide nodes:

  1. Open the topology “DemoTier1ISPJun02”.
  2. Select View->Trim Nodes
  3. In the resulting dialog, select “name” button in the top row
  4. Select “Non-match” button in the next row
  5. Enter the filter regular expression: “backbone”
  6. Click on “Trim” button

 

 

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