How DX NetOps Topology Streamlines and Optimizes Triage

Every network operator knows the feeling: a critical alert fires, and suddenly it’s all hands on deck. But instead of jumping straight to resolution, you find yourself sifting through irrelevant alerts, flipping between tools, and trying to assemble a puzzle with missing pieces. In today’s high-stakes, hybrid environments, that kind of delay isn’t just frustrating—it’s costly.

When issues arise, fast, intelligent triage is a must. However, that’s not the reality for many teams today.  An EMA report (Network Management Megatrends 2024) paints a vivid picture of some of the obstacles teams are faced with:

• Skills gaps. Only 9% of IT professionals in the EMA study said it was easy to hire skilled networking staff. For everyone else? Attracting and retaining talent with the right experience is a constant uphill climb.
• Alarm noise. Alarm fatigue is hitting hard—only 29% of network alerts are actionable. That means nearly three-quarters of alerts are just noise that your team has to sift through, wasting time and energy before they even begin meaningful triage.
• Tool sprawl. 70% of organizations rely on anywhere from four to 15 tools to monitor and troubleshoot their networks. That’s a whole lot of toggling, guessing, and doing manual correlation just to understand what’s going on.

Given these obstacles, troubleshooting is slow, painful, and error prone. And with networks growing larger, more complex, and more dynamic by the day, these challenges only get compounded.

DX NetOps Topology: Solution introduction

With DX NetOps, teams can collect and correlate data from a wide variety of sources, including alarms and faults, performance metrics, network experience insight, and topology; as well as data from SD-WAN, software-defined data center, and Wi-Fi networks.

But data by itself is not enough.

The real challenge is pulling this information together, determining what it all means in a holistic, contextual fashion, and understanding how different data points relate to each other.

This is the role of DX NetOps Topology. With DX NetOps Topology, you don’t just get a flood of information. You get context. You get a live, visual map of how your network is connected. And when something breaks, you don’t just get a basic alert—you see where the issue resides and how it relates to everything around it.

As a result, if an outage or performance issue arises, teams don’t just get a notification, they can see exactly where the issue is located, and understand how it relates to the surrounding environment.

In recent posts, we have provided additional background on DX NetOps Topology. First, we provided an introduction to DX NetOps Topology. Next, we outlined how the product delivers timely, correlated visibility in SD-WAN environments.

This post offers a look at how all the product’s capabilities come together to enable faster, more intelligent, and more efficient triage and resolution.

DX NetOps Topology: Key triage advantages

DX NetOps Topology can put all operational data into a visual context and convert information into clear, actionable insight. The moment an alarm is raised, you don’t just get a static alert. You gain immediate access to a live, connected view of the network.

The fault is the starting point and the topology provides the map to addressing it. The product equips you with insights into the surrounding topology, so you don’t see the problematic device in isolation. You can explore neighboring devices on the network path, and immediately see if the issue is isolated or a symptom of an issue elsewhere in the network.

Further, you get correlated, contextual monitoring data from the moment you open a triage view. You can access real-time monitoring context on device properties, alarms, performance metrics—all in a pane on the right side of the screen. No need to switch tabs or try to piece intelligence together from different screens.

Powerful insights yield big results

With DX NetOps Topology, teams can achieve these advantages:

• Gain clear visibility and control across the entire enterprise network.
• Simplify the investigation process.
• Cut mean time to resolution.
• Improve confidence in root cause isolation.

A step-by-step view of the triage workflow

Let’s walk through what triage looks like with DX NetOps Topology.

To illustrate, let’s say your alarm console shows a site router has exceeded a latency threshold. Normally, you’d be jumping into various logs or bouncing between several tools to start investigation. With DX NetOps Topology, you just launch the triage workflow—right from the alarm itself.

Instantly, the topology view zeroes in on the device that raised the alarm. Around it, you see everything connected by a hop, whether routers, switches, or uplinks. With a single click, you can expand in any direction, upstream or downstream, to see if the issue is localized or part of a chain of affected elements. You can also easily step back or move forward as needed.

On the right side of the screen, there’s a detail pane that updates in real time, showing all the key stats and properties for whatever you’ve selected: alarms, performance metrics, interfaces, port status, and configuration data. Everything you need to make a decision is right there—no switching between tools required.

Whether you’re a seasoned network engineer or just getting up to speed, the product gives you the flexibility you need to most quickly navigate, get the required information, and start resolution. Advanced users can gain full control over their views. For example, they can choose how many hops they want to explore at one time, and can tune navigation and quickly adjust as needed.

Need a deeper dive? Jump straight from the topology into a device context page to access full monitoring history, configuration details, and device health trends. You can also scale your triage beyond a single device—including to a group, a site, and a peer set—and get a full picture of the potential impact.

With all these capabilities, the solution turns topology from a visual map to a powerful diagnostic tool. The solution delivers clarity, control, and confidence when you need it most.

Conclusion

In today’s complex, hybrid, and high-pressure environments, fast, intelligent triage isn’t a nice-to-have capability—it’s mission critical. DX NetOps Topology gives you the context, clarity, and confidence to stay ahead of problems and keep your networks running smoothly. Tap into DX NetOps Topology to see connections, and troubleshoot quickly and seamlessly. To learn more, be sure to view our recent Small Bytes webcast, Contextual Triage & Troubleshooting Simplified with DX NetOps Topology.

In addition, be sure to view our prior posts on DX NetOps Topology:

• Introducing DX NetOps Topology: What It Provides, How It Works
• Streamlining the Complexity of SD-WAN Deployments With DX NetOps Topology