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Acquire and View the Network Topology

Paragon Pathfinder acquires the network topology by gathering data from the network by using Border Gateway Protocol Link-State (BGP-LS) and Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP). You can view the acquired topology on the Topology page (Network > Topology) of the Paragon Automation GUI. For more information about viewing and working with the network topology, see About the Topology Page.

Before you configure Paragon Pathfinder to acquire the network topology, you must do the following for the devices to be added to the topology;

  • Configure MPLS, RSVP, the interior gateway protocol (IGP) (IS-IS or OSPF) traffic engineering, and NETCONF.

  • To view telemetry on the topology, configure:

    • Junos Telemetry Interface (JTI) and Junos Real-time performance monitoring (RPM) service on Juniper devices.

    • OpenConfig or SNMP on Cisco IOS-XR devices.

    For details, see the steps to configure the Juniper Networks devices and Cisco devices in the Workflow to Collect Device Statistics section in Collect Analytics Data Overview.

To acquire and view the network topology with metrics on the Paragon Automation GUI:

  1. Onboard devices to Paragon Automation so that you can start managing the devices; see Add Devices.
  2. For each device that you onboard, edit the fields related to Path Computation Element (PCE) protocol (PCEP), NETCONF, and parameters related to telemetry on the Edit Devices page (Configuration > Devices > Edit (pencil) icon) for each device that you added; see Edit Devices.
  3. On the Device Group Configuration page (Configuration > Device Groups), verify that the onboarded devices are assigned to the Controller device group.
    Note:

    By default, all devices discovered in a topology are added to the Controller device group. However, if you add a device manually, you must add the device to the Controller device group. For more information, see Edit a Device Group.
  4. Set up the device collection task so that you can obtain the configuration on the network devices; see Add a Device Collection Task.
  5. Verify that the status of the device collection task on the Task Scheduler page (Administration > Task Scheduler) displays Completed.
  6. Configure Paragon Pathfinder to acquire the network topology:

    1. Configure PCEP on the devices to obtain information about LSPs in the network.

    2. Enable BGP-LS on the devices to acquire topology.

    3. (Optional) Configure BGP-LS peers in Paragon Automation if you want to change the BGP-LS peers that you configured while installing Paragon Automation.

  7. Verify that the devices are advertising BGP-LS routes and that Paragon Automation has received the routes.
  8. Verify that the network topology is discovered, and that the topology is displayed in the Paragon Automation GUI. On the Topology page:
    • The devices should be displayed with the router icon.
    • Type, IP Address, and Management IP (address) should be displayed for each device on the Node tab of the Network Information table.

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