Frequently Asked Questions

Osprey runs on Linux (amd64). Debian packages are available for Debian 12 (Bookworm), Debian 13 (Trixie), and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

2 GB RAM minimum (4 GB recommended), a Linux server with amd64 architecture, and network access to your routers via GRE tunnels or SNMP. PostgreSQL 15+ is required and installed automatically by the package.

Add the APT repository at deb.wijnberg.net, then run sudo apt install osprey. The package automatically configures PostgreSQL, NATS, nginx, TLS certificates, and all Osprey services. See the download page for step-by-step instructions.

Username admin, password admin. On first login, you are required to change the default password before accessing any other feature.

Yes. The Debian package installs all dependencies (PostgreSQL, nginx, message bus), creates the database, generates TLS certificates and secrets, runs migrations, and starts all services. You can log in immediately after installation.

Time-travel lets you scrub back through topology history using a timeline slider. You can see exactly what your network looked like at any point — which devices were up, which links were active, and what the OSPF metrics were. Useful for post-incident analysis.

Topology Health, IP Conflicts (duplicate router IDs / IPs / prefixes / external conflicts), Single Points of Failure (articulation points and bridge links), Routing Stability (flapping links and unstable devices), Congestion Trend, Timer Consistency (OSPF and IS-IS), MTU Mismatch, OSPF Best Practices, and Dependency Impact (Peer AS, Critical Pairs, SRLG failure impact). All reports are searchable, sortable, and exportable to CSV.

Engineering Mode is Osprey's what-if simulation. You can fail links and nodes, change IGP metrics, add hypothetical routers and links, and model SRLG failure groups — all without touching your production network. SPF is recomputed server-side using RFC 2328-correct multi-area Dijkstra (OSPF) or ISO 10589-correct multi-level Dijkstra (IS-IS). Batch assessment iterates every link or node to find your most critical failure points. Scenarios can be saved and reloaded, and the mode combines with time travel to replay past outages with proposed fixes applied.

Yes. Osprey exports to Visio (.vsdx), SVG, and PNG formats. You can also upload custom icon packs to use vendor-specific device icons in your exports.

Osprey generates alerts for topology changes (device up/down, link changes, metric changes) and correlates related events into incidents. For example, if a router goes down and takes five links with it, you see one incident instead of six separate alerts.

Yes. Osprey includes a browser-based SSH and telnet terminal. Right-click any device on the canvas to open a terminal session directly.

Yes, via SNMP polling. Osprey collects interface statistics (traffic, errors, utilization) and displays them on the topology canvas. Links can be color-coded by utilization level.

Five systemd services: the engine (topology processing, SPF, event correlation), the API server (REST API, WebSocket, SSH proxy), the collector manager (GRE tunnels and IGP adjacencies), the SNMP poller (discovery, traffic counters, L2 crawling), and the BMP server (BGP peers and RIBs on TCP 11019). Inter-service messaging is via NATS. All services are managed as a single group via osprey.target.

All data is stored in PostgreSQL on your server. Osprey is entirely self-hosted — no data leaves your infrastructure.

Osprey provides a full database backup and restore feature under Administration. You can also export a portable configuration backup that includes all hierarchy definitions, users, and settings.

Yes. Osprey is vendor-agnostic — it works with any device that speaks OSPF, IS-IS, BGP (BMP), LLDP, or CDP. This includes Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Nokia, Mikrotik, and effectively any modern networking platform.

If installed via APT, simply run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade osprey. The package handles database migrations and service restarts automatically.