Documentation
Real-time topology
The console displays a living map of your mesh: the nodes that are online and the paths actually elected between them. It is the view that answers the everyday questions — who is reachable, where the traffic goes through, where a friction point sits. This page explains what the graph shows, how often it refreshes and how to read it for diagnosis.
The real-time graph
The topology represents the nodes of your networks and the links that actually connect them at the present moment. A node stands for an enrolled machine; a link stands for the path elected between two nodes — the one traffic really takes, not a theoretical list of possible connections.
VIGIL-MESH first establishes an immediate connection through a blind relay, then attempts a direct peer-to-peer path in the background and switches to it without interruption when it succeeds. The topology reflects this outcome: it shows the currently elected path — direct when it was obtained, relayed otherwise — not the intent. The full selection and migration mechanism is described in /en/docs/chemins-relais.
Nodes
Each online machine appears with its internal name. A node absent from the graph is a node that is not participating right now — offline, suspended or unreachable.
Elected paths
Links show where traffic between peers really goes: a direct path when obtained, or a relay fallback. It is state, not configuration.
Relays
The vigies that provide the immediate connection and the fallback appear as transit points when a direct path could not be established.
Freshness: on the order of thirty seconds
The view is not frozen: it refreshes continuously. Two dynamics combine — a periodic refresh, on the order of thirty seconds, which keeps the whole picture current, and an immediate update on every path change, as soon as a migration happens or a node appears or disappears.
- Expect a display latency on the order of thirty seconds for the overall state: a node that has just connected or left appears or disappears within that window.
- A path change — a switch from a relay fallback to the direct path, for example — is reflected as soon as it happens, without waiting for the next periodic cycle.
- A passing gap between the graph and reality during that short interval is normal: the view converges, it does not claim to be perfectly instantaneous.
Reading the topology to diagnose
The topology is the first diagnostic reflex: it locates a problem before you even open the logs. A few simple readings quickly orient the search.
- A node that is expected but absent from the graph: the machine is not participating — check its enrollment, its status and its client-side connectivity.
- A peer that stays on a relayed path when a direct one was expected: a NAT or a firewall is probably blocking direct establishment — the lead is on the network side.
- Several peers all falling back to the same relay: look at that relay's availability and how the vigie fleet is distributed.
- A node repeatedly appearing and disappearing: instability of its network access rather than a policy problem.
The topology tells you where to look; it does not replace the tools that tell you why. To dig deeper — health endpoint, logs, connectivity checks and NAT leads — see /en/docs/depannage-diagnostics.