When a network outage is reported – what do you do first?
Traditionally, the problem area would be located by either piecing the picture together from a stack of Visio network diagrams, or drawing one from scratch using pen and paper.
Dynamic network diagram technology from NetBrain automates this process. Problem areas can now be mapped out on-the-fly, without depending on pre-existing documents. Here is how:
Map Problem Areas on-the-fly:
User Input for Mapping |
Sample Troubleshooting Scenarios |
How To Map Problem Areas |
1-point Mapping |
An alarm of un-reachable device is reported by the monitoring system |
Drag the icon of the unreachable device into a L3 map and extend its neighbors |
| A server loses connectivity to the network |
Run a NetBrain trace from one of the NetBrain servers and map out the traceroute results automatically |
| A PC infected with a virus brings the network to its knees |
Search the IP of the PC in NetBrain’s One-IP table and drag-and-drop the search results into a L2 map |
2-point Mapping |
The communication between two email servers is reported to be too slow during sync up |
Enter the IP address of an IP phone and its voice gateway in the A & B box and discover the live paths between them |
| VoIP voice quality is bad and It is suspected that the WAN link between two data centers is congested |
Enter IP address of IP phone and the voice gateway in the A & B box, discover the live paths between them |
| Internet access is slow and a user suspects they are using the slower backup Internet link |
Map out the user’s internet traffic flow by pasting the traceroute results (to the Internet) into NetBrain |
| Multiple-point Mapping |
A power outage in the data center knocks down multiple networks and servers |
Use the map switch group function to map L2 connectivity in the data center including routers, switches and servers |
| A distribution POP loses partial connectivity when the primary WAN link is down and the backup link only routes certain traffic |
Use the map device group function to create a diagram of all devices behind the distribution POP |
| All users in the Boston office lose their multicasting feeds of the stock ticker |
Conduct a controlled discovery of the Boston office network and map out the entire infrastructure |
Visit the Build Dynamic Network Diagram section to see more mapping examples.
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