Looking Glass Notes

Just a few straight forward notes on our implementation of Ed Kern's looking glass (which was http://nitrous.digex.net).

- Some items are not implemented for the junipers/foundrys yet (so, as i get to it) or no equivalent command exists.
- If there is something which you feel is missing, feel free to ask and/or send comments to rancid@shrubbery.net. No guarantees.
- Only one query per router allowed at any given time. This is to avoid resource deprivation on the looking glass host or the router. The looking glass will attempt to serialize queries.
- The looking glass will ping a router prior to querying it to avoid trying to query routers which are down or otherwise inaccessible.
- Login failures can be intermittent or permanent, either due to the router being inaccessible from the looking glass machine, or authorization failure(s). Contact your local network engineering folks to resolve login failures.
- Queries followed by <something> require an argument(s) in the text window below the query list. Some queries take optional arguments denoted by [something]. Multiple arguments should be separated by a space.
- Note that output from certain queries is cached by the server and may be slightly out of date. These queries will be noted as such in the output. This is limited to queries which could produce lots of output, such as 'sh ip bgp dampened-paths'.
- Note that some queries have potential to produce great load on the router and produce lots of output, such as 'sh ip bgp' or 'sh ip bgp reg '^3561'. The looking glass attempts to deny such commands.

Some useful hints:

- Show interfaces can take arguments other than an interface name, assuming the router is running an O/S version with the capability. For example; a cisco can take 'descriptions' or 'brief' and 'terse' for the juniper.
- Show ip bgp neighbor can take additional arguments (if configured to allow it), such as 'advertised routes', 'flap-statistics', 'received-routes', and 'routes'. The argument will be converted for the platform.