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Contents of the reports are the same regardless of how they are viewed, but if you use the Generate Web Reports feature, others will be able to see the reports and view the topologies even though they do not have access to the Cisco Netsys Baseliner software.
This chapter describes the general format of the web reports. For more information about the contents of the reports, see the chapter "Reports."
Web reports contain the same information as reports viewed in the program's main window, but they are linked together as web pages and can be viewed in Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Your default browser is automatically started when you click on the Generated Web Reports command on the View menu of the Cisco Netsys Baseliner main window.
In addition to reports in HTML format, the Netsys Advisor Report Browser, a web-based topology viewer developed in Java, is also available for displaying topologies in the browser while you are viewing reports. You can display the baseline topology by clicking on the corresponding Campus, Flat, RSRB, OSPF, OSPF Areas, AppleTalk, DECnet, BGP, IS-IS, Voice, and VPDN buttons in the upper frame of the browser.
Web reports can take up significant disk space, especially for large networks. You should check the your baseline's reports subdirectory periodically---especially if you use an automated batch processing utility, as described in the chapter "Keeping Baselines Up-to-date"---and delete those you no longer want to keep.
Web reports are stored in a subdirectory of the reports directory. The first time you generate web reports, this subdirectory is named 0001; the next is 0002; and so on. However, once you delete one of these earlier-numbered report folders, this pattern is no longer valid. Unused numbers will be reused.
To determine which reports are older, you should check file-creation dates, using the web browser and index table, or the Windows NT Explorer.
To see an index of web reports, choose Generated Web Reports command from the Cisco Netsys Baseliner View menu, or use your browser to open the index.html file in your baseline's reports folder. Remember, however, that this index will not show any reports that were generated using the -o option of the run_ngs utility.
To find out how much space a collection of reports takes up, open the Windows NT Explorer and click the right mouse button on the numbered folder inside the reports folder. Choose the Properties command on the floating menu that opens. The properties dialog will tell you the size of all the files in the folder (including folders within the folder).
Or, you can open a DOS command window and make the baseline's reports directory the current directory. Enter dir <numbered folder> /s and press the Enter key. A list of all files in the named directory and all of its subdirectories will scroll across the screen, then the number of bytes of disk space used by all the files will be reported. This will give you an indication of how much space will be occupied by each iteration of reports.
You can use this number to determine how many report sets you want to keep on your disk, then you can delete or archive reports periodically.
The Cisco Netsys Baseliner command line utilities include reportmgr.exe, which you can use to remove reports you no longer wish to keep on your hard disk. For information about this utility, see the discussion of command-line utilities in the chapter "Keeping Baselines Up-to-date."
Select the Generate Web Reports command on the Tools menu to generate a collection of reports in HTML format.
When you want to view reports in a browser, you should use this feature rather than saving reports in HTML format from the Save Report command on the File menu. Generated reports contain hypertext links to other reports, making this feature more versatile than the Save Report command, which is primarily for exporting reports in a transportable format.
To view HTML reports, select the Generated Web Reports command on the View menu. Your web browser will open.
The web page will be divided into two frames. The top frame contains a table of each version of web reports that you have generated. These reports are stored in numbered subdirectories in your baseline's reports subdirectory. The table lists these subdirectories, and shows the date and time when the reports were generated. Click on the directory name to open a given set of reports.
The bottom frame is not used in this page, though it will be in the page that opens when you click on a directory name.
When a specific set of reports opens, the top pane displays the Cisco Netsys Report Browser, which provides web-browser access to your baseline topologies. You can choose to open different views, or you can open previously opened views that were bookmarked.
The bottom pane lists the individual reports that are available. Click on a report title in the bottom pane to open that report.
Click on a device name in a report (bottom frame in the browser) to highlight that device in all open topology views.
The Netsys Advisor Report Browser works similarly to the Cisco Netsys Baseliner software's topology window, but there are some significant differences, described here.
For a basic discussion of viewing a topology, see the chapter "Topologies."
When the mouse pointer passes over an icon in the topology, the device's name will be displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
Select the Close command on the Topology menu to close the topology view window.
Select the Show Drilldown Elem's command on the Topology menu to highlight the icons of all elements that have drilldown reports available. To remove the highlights, click the mouse anywhere inside the topology view (be sure the select Mode button---the arrow---is chosen).
You click on the Bookmarks menu to display views you previously created using the bookmark feature. If no bookmarked views are currently available, this menu will be empty.
You click on the Drilldown menu to obtain access to underlying windows, containing information focused on the selected device. If no underlying windows are currently available, this menu will be empty. Selecting a drilldown item from this menu will open a new topology window, which will hide the parent window. When you are ready to return to the parent view, you can close, minimize, or reposition the drilldown window.
You specify a network element name or address value in this field, then you press Return to highlight the icon(s) matching the specified value (case insensitive), in the current topology. An implicit match all (*) is applied to the value you specify. For example, when you specify netsys9 and you then press Return, all router icons containing netsys9 in their names are highlighted in the topology view.
You select this checkbox to set the window's zoom factor so the entire topology is displayed within the window following a search. If this checkbox is not selected, the highlighted device may remain out of view and you will have to use the scroll bars to manually bring it into the window.
In the Netsys Advisor Report Browser, subview options (routing protocol, routing process, or encapsulation) are specified in the upper portion of the panel on the right of the window, not in a tabbed panel at the bottom as in the program's topology window. The "L" button next to each selection option determines whether or not labels will be shown for that option, and the format of the label's data. (If the button is selected, labels will be shown in the appropriate format if the label button for the device or protocol is selected as described below.) There are also three Mode buttons in the Subview group at the top of the pane (not to be confused with the Mode tool buttons described below). These buttons provide the same and, or, and equal functionality provided by the Condition list in the subview panel of the program's topology window. If the mode is set to equal, multiple subview options are not allowed---only one subview option can be selected at a time, and clicking a different "L" button will also cause the selected option to change.
Instead of toolbars along the top of the window as in the program's topology view window, the web browser presents the Labels, Options, and Zoom buttons in groups along the right side of the window. There is also a fourth group, called Mode, which lets you switch functionality of the mouse pointer. (This group is in addition to the subview options Mode buttons in the top group of controls.)
As in the program's topology window, the Labels buttons allow you to show/hide various network element labels in the web viewer window.
As in the program's topology window, the Options buttons allow you to show/hide links, secondary LANs, terminal LANs, and Frame Relay and X.25 circuits in the web viewer window.
As in the program's topology window, the Zoom buttons allow you to control the zoom-factor for the current topology view in the web viewer window.
Three Mode buttons allow you to change mouse-click functionality.
Posted: Tue Apr 27 11:56:46 PDT 1999
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