Dynamic Map

NetBrain redefined the concept of network map by offering the industry’s only real-time network Dynamic Maps which continuously discover, model, and visualize the entire hybrid network – from the public cloud all the way down to the network edge.  And because the data model also includes the ability to do historical data comparisons, it’s easier to identify changes and potential sources of problems. Operations teams can now visualize, navigate, investigate and troubleshoot hybrid network issues in a single consolidated view (including data programmatically collected from third-party monitoring applications) to display:

• Network inventory physical configurations:
  • Network logical topologies (L2, L3, MPLS, IPSEC, SDN)
  • Network design pathways
  • Network baseline configuration and changes made over time
  • Contextual Data received from 3^rd-party tools (via API)

Unlike static diagrams, Dynamic Maps are rendered on-demand based upon actual live data for every point(s) in the network in a single pane of glass. NetBrain’s digital twin and the associated Dynamic Maps provide the perfect foundation for NetBrain’s network automation capabilities.

NetBrain’s Dynamic Maps becomes the foundation to visually interact with the network. For any desired  task or investigation, NetBrain will create real-time and intuitive contextualized map of the relevant part of the network.

The search bar in NetBrain acts like a Google search for any data within your network. Search leverages the power of big data by quickly finding and visualizing relevant network information. Entering a free text string into the bar will run a search across the entire data model for matching any data element, and you can combine with a description to narrow your search even more. For instance, you might be looking for a “CISCO” router running IOS version “15.5” and located in “Atlanta.”

Once the search identifies the device in question, it creates a map of the device and its immediate neighbors, which can also be expanded or contracted depending on the view desired and the problem being addressed.

Sometimes you need documentation for an entire existing site or branch office. Since NetBrain maintains a real-time digital twin of the entire network, it can create these needed maps at the touch of a button to be used elsewhere for remedial, operations or compliance purposes. And since NetBrain also includes geographic and organizational attributes, it helps your teams focus on the topology in terms most familiar to their operational processes.

The logical relationships between sites can be grouped and then visualized in a single overview map (e.g., North America, United States, Boston, Boston DC 1). Users can then drill into any site to see the L2 or L3 relationships of devices within that site.

Device Group is a collection of devices configured with the same routing protocol or categorized by other logical conditions. Device groups can better organize network devices, critically important for operations at scale. These are the types of device groups:

1. My Device Groups — contains private device groups that are only accessible to you. To set a private device group as public.
2. Public — contains device groups that can be made accessible to all users in the current domain.
3. System — contains the system’s built-in device groups generated after the routing protocol calculation for the discovered devices. Every system device group collects devices configured with the same routing protocol and AS number and is also named with the routing protocol and the AS number, such as, #EIGRP 100. The device groups in this category are not intended to be modified or deleted.
4. Media — contains the media used to connect interfaces of multiple devices (multi-point) together in a specific topology type, including LAN, WAN, DMVPN, MPLS Cloud, bus, etc. For example, a LAN segment in IPv4 L3 topology.

IP Address Management, or IPAM, provides precise information on the state of the network and the IP addresses being used at a given time. IPAM has become an critically important part of quickly analyzing and troubleshooting any network.

NetBrain’s One-IP table records the physical connections for all IP addresses in the workspace. It is retrieved during the Layer 2 topology discovery, and it can be used to troubleshoot any layer 2 connection issues. Once opened, it will automatically group IPs by LAN segments.

Given this table, navigation can be as simple as searching for a unique address and then dragging it to the map to create a visual que of the device and its network neighbors. In addition, you can export any One-IP table to applications like Microsoft Word or Excel as needed.

Users can also save their existing Dynamic Map view(s) and export it into native and edittable Microsoft Visio with the click of a button. The amount of detail on the map at the time of the export is reflected in the resulting file.

Users can save their maps and export them directly to a formatted reference document including all associated design and inventory data with the map including diagnostic data, full configuration files, routing tables, etc.

NetBrain’s Function Portal enables network engineers and operators to collaborate with their colleagues and others in related support organizations (SecOps, DevOps, etc.) who do not normally use the NetBrain system, but who are critical for expeditious cross-domain problem resolution. Real-time collaboration reduces the number of hand-offs and associated delays typically seen with manual processes.

Improving team productivity and collaboration is one of the key goals of MAP EVERYWHERE. With Function Portal, external users from different teams (IT engineers, security engineers, etc.) can gain fast and free access to use selected NetBrain functions and resources through a website, including dynamic mapping, A/B path calculation, and One-IP table query.