The Graph view gives you a visual map of routing topology instead of reading it out of a list: useful for confirming a physical, virtual, or tieline path actually looks the way you expect. It's a diagnostic view: you can look, filter, and inspect, but you can't change a route from here.
Before you begin#
- Access to Routing → Graph (only visible when Tielines or Virtual routing is enabled).
Choose the right view#
The graph has four separate views, switched from the View control:
- Physical Ports: physical port bundles per connection, connected by their currently active routes.
- Tielines: sources, destinations, and Relations (Wires), built from the routing paths Buttons has persisted as route requests.
- Virtual → Virtual: live virtual bundle-to-bundle mappings.
- Virtually Routed Ports: virtual bundles alongside the physical ports/groups they currently map to.
Each requires Tielines or Virtual routing to be enabled, matching whichever concept it visualizes.
Know what each view can and can't prove#
This is the most important thing to get right before you rely on the graph during an incident:
- Physical Ports reflects genuinely live data: it polls each connection's actively reported source every couple of seconds. This answers "what is routed right now," the same as the Live state described in Understand route status.
- Tielines is built from persisted route requests (what Buttons is maintaining or expecting for a cross-router path), not a live poll of every device's actual crosspoint state. Treat it the same way Understand route status treats Requests: it shows what Buttons expects, not standalone proof that the physical destination actually reached that state.
- Neither view shows real signal presence. The "Hide black/none/silence routes" filter only hides sources flagged or named as no-signal: it doesn't detect an actual signal on the wire. Confirm signal presence on the destination device itself, not from this filter.
- The virtual views are a diagnostic projection of routing state for display only: they don't feed back into how routes are actually resolved or executed.
Read and filter the graph#
- Use Tags to filter which ports or bundles appear, searchable within the filter popover.
- Use Labels to choose which label type displays on each node (Name, User, Setup, Installation, or Ext Custom Label).
- On Physical Ports, use Bundle sorting (Alphabetical, Original, or Manual) and the Hide black/none/silence routes / Hide unrouted nodes checkboxes to cut down a busy view.
- On Virtually Routed Ports, use Bundle physical ports to switch between individual and grouped port display.
- Pan and zoom with the standard controls and mini-map. There's no free-text search for a specific port or route by name: narrow down with Tags instead.
Node positions are laid out automatically and re-arrange whenever the underlying topology changes: dragging a node around is a temporary visual convenience for the current session, not a saved layout.
If you get stuck#
What you see | What to try |
|---|
A view you expect isn't available. | Confirm Tielines or Virtual routing is actually enabled: each view requires one or the other. |
The Tielines view shows a path that doesn't match what a device is actually doing. | This view reflects persisted route requests, not a live poll: check Understand route status for the same distinction applied to individual routes. |
A route with no visible signal isn't hidden by "Hide black/none/silence routes." | That filter only hides sources flagged or named as no-signal: it can't detect an actual missing signal. Check the destination device directly. |
You can't find a specific port in a large graph. | Use the Tags filter rather than searching: there's no free-text node search. |
You rearranged nodes and the layout reset. | That's expected: positions are recalculated automatically whenever topology changes; dragging doesn't persist a layout. |
Where to go next#
