NetBrain Path Calculator emulates the real packet forwarding process in your live network (including overlay and underlay networks) to map the forwarding path. It also enables you to baseline, document, and define the diagnosis logic for the application path efficiently when the network is healthy. Then this well-documented and executable knowledge can help you resolve application slowness issues more efficiently and do effective application impact analysis when a problem occurs on a network device or device interface.
Path-Based Troubleshooting Flow (PBTF) applies the Path Intent feature, Intent-based Trigger Automation Framework(TAF) and the Path-related functions to enable users to baseline, document, and define the diagnosis logic for the application path efficiently when the network is healthy and then these well-documented and executable knowledge can help network engineers resolve application slowness issue more efficiently during troubleshooting, or do effective application impact analysis efficiently when some issues occurred on a network device or device interface.
Path-based Troubleshooting Flow
The PBTF is as follows:
Path-based Troubleshooting Flow
- Baseline Path and Path Intent, Add Path Intent into Intent Cluster (when the network is healthy)
When a network is healthy, the critical application flows can now be calculated via live network data with full documentation behind the path logic, and path-related baseline data and diagnosis logic can be programmatically defined inside path Intent, which can be added into a NIC as static member NIs. Then, this NIC can be used in the trigger diagnosis of TAF with the filter of member NI defined with the path source and destination and the application name. - Trigger Path-Based Diagnosis (during troubleshooting)
TAF receives the ticket sent by the third party and triggers the execution of NIC according to the logic defined in TAF. NIC executes its associated member NI according to the defined logic. If the ticket is related to an application, TAF will execute the path NIC, which will run those member NIs specified for this application. The alert message for this path will be displayed in the Incident pane. - Review Baseline Path and Path Intent (during troubleshooting)
During troubleshooting time, the pre-documented application path can be intuitively accessed via the A|B path dialog by any network troubleshooter. The pre-documented path results, along with the pre-built diagnosis automation, will accelerate the slow application troubleshooting. - Calculate Live Path and Compare with Cached Path (during troubleshooting)
During troubleshooting, users can recalculate live paths and compare paths between live and cached data to reveal various issues behind a slow application. - Execute Path Intent and Diagnose Issues (during troubleshooting)
Users can rerun the associated path NI with the live network data and check the diagnosis results.
Main UI Components
The following topics are covered in this chapter (the superscript below refers to the corresponding number in the image above):