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Not a technical question per se - just wondering if anyone is aware of any software?

Anyone aware of any application/NMS/database etc that will return the hops from A to B through a network if you input all the different devices and links between them? Say I want to find all the routes between two devices - it will show me the different paths I can take (I don't specifically want the shortest path, i want to see everything available).

I've scripted something but unfortunately I'm not advanced to prevent loops etc in it, so it's kind of pointless.

Cheers S

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  • Are you asking for a simple yes/no answer? If not, product or resource recommendations are explicitly off-topic here.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Commented Jul 22, 2016 at 14:12
  • Did any answer help you? if so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could provide and accept your own answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 3:50

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Yes, this is exactly what the routing code in a router is doing when you use an SPF routing protocol. So, for your own network, if you are running an SPF protocol on it, you could run a suitably configured routing daemon on a host that supports it (say Linux). You need to be very careful that it only listens to the protocol and does not advertise any connectivity, lest you break your entire network (by creating what's poetically called a routing black hole). Then you can interrogate the link state database in that daemon to see this.

If you are not running an SPF protocol, but rather a DV protocol, then you need a way of extracting the DV data from each and every one of your routers. It would then have to run something like an SPF algorithm over all that to get what you want. I don't know of any OTS technology for this, I rolled my own 30 years ago that used a special protocol that ran on our routers to get that DV data.

And, finally, if this is not your network, the owners of the network probably consider that information proprietary and getting access to it can involve (gosh) lawyers.

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  • Thanks for the response, but it's not really what i'm after. It's not an IP network, I am looking at a voice network and just want to easily work out a few different paths that I can nail up some circuits over. Dijkstra isn't really what I am after.
    – captain yossarian
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 13:46
  • It doesn't really matter, a network is a network. If you want to plot paths through a network and the best known algorithm for plotting paths through a network "isn't really what [you are] after", then you need to explain in your question what you are after. We can't read your mind.
    – MAP
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 20:02
  • Sorry. I thought I was clear. I was asking if there's some sort of freeware or simple script available somewhere that would give me all the routes through a small network, not just SPF etc - all of the routes. I'd input all the links I have, and then input say device C and device F, and it'd tell me the routes to get through. Sorry if I've stepped on anyone's feet. And I didn't realise it was verboten to recommend open source, freeware etc.
    – captain yossarian
    Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 13:08

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