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Observe and troubleshoot

Link inspector and impairment

Inspect any link, then add delay, jitter, or loss for demos and failure drills, without rebuilding the topology.

Link impairment controls
Link impairment controls

Nodes can be up while the path between them is bad. The link dock lets you inspect a link and inject delay, jitter, or loss on it, then clear it again.

Click a link between two nodes in Design or Operate. The Link dock opens with four tabs.

TabUse it to
PropertiesConfirm the endpoints and interface names; adjust the label or style in Design
TrafficSee per-link rates, alongside Traffic Lens
CaptureStart, stop, and download a capture for this link
ImpairmentApply a preset, or set delay, jitter, and loss

Link properties
Link properties

  1. Select the link and open Impairment (sometimes labelled Link quality).
  2. Pick a preset, or set Delay (ms), Jitter, and Loss (%).
  3. Click Apply. A toast or badge confirms it.
  4. See the effect. Keep the nodes running and ping across the link from a console. Round-trip time and loss should reflect your settings.
  5. Clear it. Reset, or set delay and loss to 0, click Apply, and confirm pings return to normal.

An impaired link selected on the canvas
An impaired link selected on the canvas

Tip

A good drill: impair one spine uplink in a leaf-spine fabric, watch Traffic Lens and routing react, capture the evidence on the same link, then clear it.

If it fails

SymptomFix
No dock when you clickZoom in and click the edge line itself, not just its label.
Impairment controls missingAn edition or feature gate; see Features and editions.
Nothing measurable changesConfirm both nodes are running, wait a few seconds, ping again.
Inspector hidden during Traffic LensExit Traffic, or use the Traffic dock first.