Router Insights Overview

The Internet is made up of several autonomous systems (AS) connected through standard protocols and communication technologies. For efficient data communication across the Internet, every autonomous system in between must decide where the data packet has to go next. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) helps determine the best and the shortest route to the destination.

BGP is an exterior gateway protocol (EGP) used to exchange routing information among routers in different autonomous systems. BGP supports every autonomous system to find the best route, discover network connection changes, administer network policies, and add a layer of network security.

The standard key performance indicator (KPI) for routing is zero packet drop on network-control queue, and minimal to zero packet drop on all other queues of forwarding class. Therefore, constant monitoring of routers metrics and BGP peering quality is critical to maintain a minimum to zero packet drop condition on all interface queues. Juniper Mist Routing Assurance application enables network administrators to maintain this KPI for routing by providing continuous and real-time visibility into routers in a network.

Juniper Mist Routing Assurance presents critical router insights like router events, BGP summary, and OSPF summary information in a clear and actionable way, in the form of tables and time series graphs. These time series graphs enable administrators to view vital router metrics such as BGP peer status, peer flaps, queue depth utilization over time, and so on, for a given interval. Administrators can also view global BGP summary for a routing information base (RIB, also known as routing table) and BGP summary for a RIB for a particular BGP peer, all on a single dashboard.

Router Insights in Juniper Mist Routing Assurance application also enables administrators to monitor network traffic patterns and port errors by visualizing packet drops which include aggregated random early detection (RED) drops and tail drops. The interface queue graphs also provide valuable insights into interface queue depth utilization over time, which can further be used to prevent packet drops.