Text Search

Forward Search provides an easy and intuitive to search across your entire network and presents the results in a context relevant way. Forward Search allows you to search for:

Free-form text in config and state files
Locations
Devices
IPs of interfaces, hosts and subnets
MAC addresses
VLANs
VRFs
Security zones
Multicast Groups

Free form text

Free-form text allows you to search in any device's config or state file:

Forward's free-form text searching supports the following advanced options:

Config only: Restrict the Search results to just config files by adding the in:config operator
Single device: Restrict the Search results to just a given device by adding the device name at the beginning of the search string
Single character wildcard: wo?d returns word, wood, etc.
Multi-character wildcard: w*d returns word, wondered, wood, etc. The wildcard can to be placed at the beginning or end of the queried word as well.
Phrase queries: "wordA wordB" returns only results that have wordA wordB, e.g., wordA middle wordB would not be returned.
Proximity searches: "wordA wordB"~15 returns results where wordA is within 15 words of wordB.
Fuzzy searches: word~ returns fuzzy matches that nearly, but not exactly match the query. As an example, word~ should match work as well.

Locations

Devices

The Devices section provides details about individual devices returned in a text search, including their configuration files, state, and metadata.

Device Configurations

The Device Configuration section displays the configuration files collected for the selected device. Clicking a configuration file displays its contents in the viewer pane.

The following actions are available in the Device Configuration viewer:

Edit in Sandbox: Open the configuration file in the Sandbox editor. After making edits, you can save the file to the Sandbox or download a copy using the download icon.
History: Opens the Device Configuration File History to compare previous versions of the configuration file across snapshots.
Download: Download a copy of the current configuration file.