BLT Lite Howto

BLT Lite is simple enough to use, but here are some details that could help you out

First of, you need to paste the raw output of your IGP database.

Note that we support only Cisco OS (IOS, NX, IOX) at the moment, even though we can easily add support for other vendor outputs, so feel free to contribute by sending some samples we can work on !

OSPF: if you want to see external links, you need to paste the output of both commands (router and external) in a single shot, but external must come after router.

When you launch the "BLT Lite" page, you download all the stuff required to draw the topology inside your browser, and thus nothing is uploaded to the server (security...)

Because BLT Lite relies heavily on JavaScript we could have some browser exceptions. Anyway, all browsers we have tested so far produce a consistent output :

  • IE 11
  • Google Chrome
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Safari

Don't forget to reload the landing page each and every time you need to import data again, this will avoid mixture and confusion between duplicated nodes and links

The initial elliptic layout computes an automatic location for each router. You can rearrange all the routers by clicking on the pen icon (upper left), and then save the positions by clicking on the floppy icon.

We have been testing BLT Lite with huge databases coming from large SP networks (tens of nodes, hundreds of links, thousands of prefixes). This works pretty well, you just have to be patient for the topology to pop up. As an example, a complex topology of twenty nodes, one hundred links and five hundred prefixes loads in about four seconds in Chrome on a dual core i7.

Nodes and links are clickable. This action opens a draggable box with some content depending on your IGP output content:

  • nodes : general information, "interfaces" and "prefixes" tabs
  • links : end nodes, attributes such as metrics, IP addresses and more to come (TE attributes, segment routing...)

No we don't support backup and storage of your custom layout at the moment :-) but we are working on it...

Please don't hesitate to send us a feedback of what you like, dislike and want to see in next releases.