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Times Stored in IP Fabric

IP Fabric stores times in two different formats; Absolute Time or Relative Time depending on the type of data.

Absolute Time

This is also known as an Epoch or Unix timestamp and is stored in milliseconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970.

  • Inventory → End of Life Milestones:
    • End of Sale: endSale
    • End of Maintenance: endMaintenance
    • End of Support: endSupport
  • Management → Discovery History:
    • Last discovery time: ts
  • Management → Configuration:
    • Last Change At: lastChangeAt
    • Last Check At: lastCheckAt
  • Discovery Snapshot (GET /api/{api_version}/snapshots):
    • Start Time: tsStart
    • End Time: tsEnd

Converting millisecond timestamp to ISO date with Python

import datetime

ts = 1348876800000  # milliseconds

# datetime does not accept milliseconds so must divide by 1,000:
dt = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts/1000).replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
print(dt.isoformat())  # >>> '2012-09-29T00:00:00+00:00'

Relative Time

Relative time (stored in seconds) is the amount of time that has elapsed and does not represent an exact timestamp.

  • Inventory → Devices:
    • Uptime: uptime (relative to the boot time of the device at the time the command was run on the device.)
  • Technology → Routing → * :
    • Routes:
      • Age: nhLowestAge
    • Routing Protocols:
      • Session Time or Uptime: currStateTime

Relative time does not change.

This is relative to the time that the command was run on the device and does not change. Example:

Device reported uptime of 120 Days 5 Hours when show version was run.

Viewing that Snapshot on a day or week later will also show 120 Days 5 Hours.

Converting time interval in seconds to human readable form with Python

import datetime

ts = 200700  # seconds

dt = datetime.timedelta(seconds=ts)
print(str(dt))  # >>> '2 days, 7:45:00'

IP Fabric Time Conversion

Time conversion in IP Fabric is done in the frontend and is also formatted when exporting to CSV. The data returned via the API will always be returned in milliseconds or seconds. This can differ from other time conversion websites as an example from epochconverter.com:

Time Conversion (in seconds):

Human-readable Time IP Fabric epochconverter.com
1 minute 60 60
1 hour 3,600 3,600
1 day 86,400 86,400
1 week 604,800 604,800
1 month 2,629,800
(30.4375 days)		 2,629,743
(30.44 days)
1 year 31,557,600
(365.25 days)		 31,556,926
(365.24 days)