Is it a good ideal? Auto network topology

[dagun]

Is it a good ideal? Auto network topology
Often we will draw network topology by hand, can you add this feature? Zabbix will aoto discover device and host, then auto draw network topolog

[nelsonab]

I think a better idea would be to start a side project where people can help with that. Have a stand alone tool do the discovery phase using CDP and LLDP along with SNMP and ARP scans, then have that tool create the hosts using the API and then finally generate the maps using the API. Eventually if someone feels so inclined they could patch the frontend to do dynamic maps where nodes auto distribute around the screen as needed.

In summary, I think this would be best done as a separate community lead project.

[dagun]

Thanks for reply.

Every body do it, com on! I will .....

[qix]

Auto network topology seems nice.

However, In my experience it will always miss a part of the network, because someone made a config error or used a wrong component somewhere.
And you will only notice your tools missed it when your users start calling that it is down.

IMHO it is better to properly document your network than to trust some automatic tool to figure it out for you

Although, for a small installation it might be usefull...

[Robert Wagnon]

Topology is desperately needed

Hand entering dependencies is very time consuming and very prone to user error. And, an engineer must correctly calculate the topology before entering the dependencies.

Although automatic topology discovery does often find device configuration errors, I find this to be a big plus. People often say, "that's not how it is supposed to be" only to find that "that is how it really is".

[romale]

>However, In my experience it will always miss a part of the network, because someone made a config error or used a wrong component somewhere.

Network topology,basically, is MAC based environment that's possible to get from device (by SNMP for example). And the next step, is modeling objects and relations/connections between them.
I've no good experience with other NMS, except of one commercial, and it's discovers about 90% of network topology (difficult/hard topology) automatically. In attachment screenshots where's network topology 100% automatically discovered (port to port). Full-mash network topology is discover too. It's also auto-discover technologies supported by device and model it (bgp links for example, device configuration management and so on).

>And you will only notice your tools missed it when your users start calling that it is down.

Here, NMS should proactive say to you: that one of two power supply is Fail, or fan's fail, or device config changed (VTP server mode's changed and network segment is down ), or mac-flapping with "high cpu utilization"+"slow backup speed"+"slow SRM/ERP/DB/Portal response speed" as result, and so on.
But on topology, you shoud quickly to see what device is down/problem for example, what network segment (users) is affected by this fault, who's connected to this device, what message/s was been before on this device etc.
One of the big profit from connections (that's not just drawed), it can be analized (tree of objects) by NMS engine when root cause searching.

> IMHO it is better to properly document your network than to trust some automatic tool to figure it out for you

You're right, but it's good, when NMS do it for you with 95% of true result. Other time you can develop and improve your IT services or beer.

>Although, for a small installation it might be usefull...
10-20 devices I can model by hand). But if you have 2500-5000 devices?

[mcmyst]

Romale, from which software are this screenshots taken ?

[romale]

Romale, from which software are this screenshots taken ?

"ca spectrum" from