Policy reporting

Question

Hello...

I need some advise on Cirrus and the Policy Reporting feature.  I've been asked to give my superiors a report on which interfaces on my routers don't have a Keepalive of 1 on their configurations.  I thought I could use the Policy Reporting issue, and to some extent it does work, since I can make a report that would tell me which configurations don't have "Keepalive 1" in them.  But the issue is that I only want to know this on Giga interfaces.  I've found no way to filter the report like this.

Has anyone done something similar or has an idea on how to get this information?

Thanks

Duncan

andersond · Answer

I've started using a scripting language called TCL to access routers and switches to get information for reports.  TCL has an addon/plugin called EXPECT.  You can use TCL to telnet into the router and then issue commands using Expect.  Based on the output returned, you can filter the results to show exactly where you are looking for.

The TCL language is a bit cryptic and takes a little while to get into.  You will need the book:

- Practical Programming in Tcl & Tk 
  By Brent B. Welch

Another thing you will need to use is Regular Expressions (also called: RegEx).  RegEx are very interesting.  You basically use RegEx to do pattern filtering or pattern recognition.  Check out these websites on RegEx:

- www.regular-expressions.info
 - http://www.regexbuddy.com/

Getting TCL to do what I was looking for did take some time and effort (my brain hurt for a week).  But it is very useful.  Especially when you need to get specific info out of many devices.

(Another cool thing, is that if you master regular expressions, you can use them in many different applications.  NotePadd++ (the freeware script editor) has options for Find and Replace using Regular Expressions.  As well as other applications.)