Physical topology detection problem

[Harald Terkelsen]

NAV does not always detect switches connected to a switchport. In the "Connected to" field of the switch port report, it sometimes shows nothing. But sometimes a reload on the page displays the neighbour switches connected. But the "Remote if " is not discovered. It is always empty. It looks like it is only Procurve switches that is not discovered. This is on NAV 3.5.0b1.

[Harald Terkelsen (harald-terkelsen)]

I also just noticed that NAV believe most of our Procurve switches are connected to our main GSW on their uplink, while they are actually connected to other Procurve switches or another GSW. The "Connected to" information is not only missing, but also wrong sometimes.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

I suspect that your Procurve topology problems may be related to the problems described in this blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nav/+spec/remove-hp-switchstack-hack

We didn't have time to finish this blueprint in time for 3.5.0b1, but hopefully it will be in place for 3.5.0b2.

[Harald Terkelsen (harald-terkelsen)]

It looks like the blueprint is implemented in 3.5.0b2, but we still have the same problems.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

After investigating the database of the installation in question, I can confirm that there are several problems with the topology. Although the neighborship candidate tables seem to contain the data needed to construct a correct topology, nonetheless networkDiscovery makes wrong decisions in several places.

No-one currently maintains networkDiscovery, so this will require some deep code inspection to learn the inner workings of the program. IOW, this might take a while to diagnose and fix.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

This is likely fixed by the rewritten layer 2 topology detector in NAV 3.9. Closing.