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Spirent Knowledge Base: How can I improve the quality and effectiveness of my searches on the Spirent KB?

Environment/Versions

The Spirent Knowledge Base, which appears on the "Knowledge Base" tab on the Spirent Customer Service Center

Answer

The Spirent Knowledge Base (KB, for short) provides flexible ways to search for information and find answers to your questions. The KB searches numerous sources including Documentation, Solutions, FAQs, Tech Bulletins and the www.spirent.com site. Note: Some content is only available after you sign-in (what content?). Some content is restricted to our customers, so if you have a CSC User ID and password, sign-in before you do your searches to get the maximum results. You can also learn more about how to setup a new user account on the Spirent CSC.

Ways to search:

  • Natural language: You can enter your search as a question, just as you might ask a colleague:
    “What HTTP authentication does Avalanche support?” or “How do I upgrade my Spirent TestCenter?” or "What is the purpose of SimPLEX45 software?"
  • Keyword: You can enter search terms and keywords, but try to be specific (3-4 terms is good). For example, “Windows” will return a large number of non-specific results, but “Nomad on Windows 7” will deliver much more targeted results
  • DocID: If you want to retrieve a specific document and know the document ID, simply enter the Document ID into the search box. Document IDs are shown in a box to the right of the article

After your search, the search results offers a list of filters on the left. Clicking a filter narrows the search for that item. Filters help reduce a search with dozens or hundreds of results to find the most relevant content. The KB provides the following six filter categories:

  • Content Source: filters the available content in the KB from various sources, including the main spirent.com site, FAQs, Solutions and the Spirent Discussion Forums
  • Product: a list of the Spirent hardware/software pertaining to the search
  • Tech Area: broad technical areas such as navigation, triple-play and L2-3
  • Protocol: specific protocols pertaining to the search
  • Document Type: category of the document

Other search tips and tricks:

  • Include the relevant product name in your search, or filter for it after the initial search is complete
  • Use short, concise search terms. The KB uses a maximum of 8 terms
  • Although the KB can deal with simple misspellings, correct spelling offers the best search results
  • Boolean operators (for example, AND, OR, NOT, + and -) are not necessary for the Spirent KB. Rather, it treats these items as part of the search