About Network Protocol Manager for BGP

The flow of data across IP networks depends upon both the physical connectivity among the network devices and the routing protocols that run on those devices. The routing protocols dictate the paths across which packets flow within and between the independent networks, or autonomous systems.

Network Protocol Manager for BGP diagnoses connectivity failures for an exterior gateway protocol known as Border Gateway Protocol. Network Protocol Manager for BGP, working with VMware Smart Assurance IP Availability Manager, discovers and monitors network devices that are running BGP services, diagnoses BGP-related failures, and exports the results of its analysis to the VMware Smart Assurance Service Assurance Manager (Global Manager). Network Protocol Manager for BGP also detects common configuration problems that occur when deploying and maintaining the routing infrastructure.

The challenge of managing routing-protocol connectivity is that of determining which routing-protocol alarms are root-cause problems and which are symptoms of root-cause problems.

Network Protocol Manager for BGP meets this challenge by:

• Correlating and analyzing the alarms generated as a result of a physical-transport or BGP object failure.

• Pinpointing the object failure.

• Identifying all monitored objects affected by the failure.

  This functionality allows Network Protocol Manager for BGP users to address the problem of the failed object promptly and to dismiss all other alarms as symptoms of the problem.