VPN Explorer

VPN Baselining and Health Monitoring

VPN Explorer passively monitors and records the MP-BGP routing protocol exchanges in the Service Provider's network to compute real-time and historical routed topologies for each VPN customer, while automatically generating baselines of each customer’s VPN across multiple data attributes, including:

• PE routers participating in each customer's VPN (or in each Route Target)
• Prefixes (network addresses) advertised by each customer VPN site (or by each Route Target)

Using these baselines, VPN Explorer can provide network-wide and per-customer monitoring, reporting and alerting on deviations from baseline. Instead of having to manually “hunt and peck” for this information by logging into multiple routers, VPN Explorer provides at a glance visualizations of the Layer 3 status of each customer’s VPN. A top level VPN Explorer view provides the network administrator with a summary view of overall VPN service health, individual customer VPN site reachability and PE participation, status indicators of deviation from customer baselines, and potential VPN “hot spots” with a list of customers who have the highest percentage deviation from their baseline. A convenient explorer-style menu allows easy access to key reports and capabilities.

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A topology map that can be viewed in real-time or historical mode shows the state of the network as of the specified time. By selecting an individual customer’s VPN, the topology map will indicate the PE routers that were participating in the customer’s VPN at the selected time.  Further details can be shown, including the list of prefixes advertised per site and a complete list of all routing events pertaining to the customer’s VPN.  Powerful event analysis and filtering tools let the network engineer rapidly analyze and diagnose any potential problems.

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