Bitemporal
Every observation carries two time ranges: when it was true on the
network (valid_during) and when we believed it (recorded_during).
“As of T” queries are first-class on both axes.
l2trace
The L2 traceroute tool for operators who need to ask "what did the network
look like at 14:42 last Tuesday?" — and get an answer.
The TUI in one glance
Section titled “The TUI in one glance”
The OPS dashboard answers “what’s broken right now?” at a glance — and the as-of header at the top means it answers the same question for any T.
What’s the point?
Section titled “What’s the point?”Existing OSS network tools (Netdisco, NetDB, NeDi, LibreNMS) answer “where is MAC X right now?” well. They struggle with two harder questions:
- What L2 path does a frame from A to B take through the fabric — hop by hop, now?
- Same question, but at 14:42 UTC three weeks ago?
l2trace is built around those two questions.
Hop-by-hop
A Postgres recursive CTE walks adjacencies, filters STP-blocking edges, handles MLAG group collapse, and terminates cleanly on flood / dead-end / loop.
Multi-source
gNMI streaming + SNMP polling + SSH (show mac-address-table via
napalm) collect FDB and LLDP in
parallel. A reconciler converges them into one bitemporal log,
quarantining events that disagree and surfacing one-way LLDP via
the adjacency audit.
Operator-first
Keyboard-driven Textual TUI with four modes (TRACE / HISTORY / OPS / AUDIT) and an ambient as-of timestamp picker. No browser, no clicking.
How the docs are organized
Section titled “How the docs are organized”These docs follow the Diátaxis framework — four kinds of writing, each answering a different question:
Tutorial
Learning by doing. Start from make up and end with your first
bitemporal traceroute. → Start here
How-to
Task-oriented recipes. “I want to find out who flapped this MAC last week.” → How-to guides
Reference
Look-up facts. CLI flags, schema columns, event envelope fields. → Reference
Explanation
Why it works that way. The bitemporal model, the traceroute algorithm, the reconciler’s late-arrival rule. → Explanation