Network Topology 5.3.0 — edges in detail, filters & GraphML

After the 5.1 release things moved quickly — 5.2.0 and now 5.3.0. The map doesn’t just look nicer; in large environments it becomes usable at all.

Every link now tells its story

Clicking an edge opens a detail panel: both ports, utilisation against the negotiated speed — and errors and discards at the port rather than as a host total. When an interface drops packets you see which one, not just that the host is affected. The ports are named the way they’re named: Gi1/0/24 instead of “24”, read from ifName/ifDescr/ifAlias.

Re-patched cables stand out

Links now age instead of simply vanishing. When a neighbour stops being reported, the edge stays flagged as stale rather than silently dropping off the map. So you can see what changed since yesterday — a re-patched cable is reported, not swallowed.

How sure is this edge?

Every link derived from LLDP/CDP now carries a confidence score for how reliable the match is. A guess no longer looks like a measurement — in mixed switch estates, a difference that matters.

Maps with thousands of hosts load at all

Until now the frontend fetched all metric items in a single unbounded API call — for large host groups the browser ran out of memory before drawing anything. Now items are fetched in chunks of 150 hosts and reduced immediately. For 5,000 hosts with 24 ports each that’s 566 MB → 90 MB at unchanged runtime; a more typical group of 5,000 servers with two interfaces needs 22 MB. Only then does the automatic group view from ~1,200 nodes become the whole answer rather than half of it.

Filters, focus & GraphML

Along from 5.2: filtering by host and hop radius — “show me everything within two hops of this switch” — plus a focus mode that hides the rest, and configurable colour scales for super admins. And the topology can be exported as GraphML for yEd, Gephi & co. — e.g. for network documentation or audits outside of Zabbix.

It follows your theme

The map now takes light or dark from your Zabbix — no separate switch, nothing to set. If you don’t expect it, the switch looks like a bug; now it just fits. This theming work — design as much as code — is by Christos Diamantis, who is also behind the filter and focus features from 5.2. Thank you.

Security fix — a reason to update even without interest in features

A bug in the tab URL parameter (?nt_tab=…) bypassed the permission check and could open a view for which there was no button at all. That’s fixed — buttons, permissions and the URL check now run off the same list. That alone makes the update worth it.

Where does it run?

Zabbix 7.0 LTS and 7.4, AGPL-3.0, no build tools required. Updating from 5.x: replace the module files and reload php-fpm — a Scan directory is not needed, no new action was added. The full list is in the changelog, install steps in the docs.

Code on GitHub; questions and feedback welcome by email or issue.