Historically, testing network services from multiple locations was cumbersome. If a test was conducted from two BBNET servers, the status log on the BBDISPLAY would only show the state of the last status log received. You can now associate a BBNET with a location tag such that BB will then merge the common status logs from the multiple locations into a single status log which is derived from a logical operation applied to those status logs. In essence, if BBNETs named A,B and C test the same service on the same server, a status log will be created using the aggregate results.
To use this feature, each BBNET servers must be defined with a location tag. This is done simply by adding the tag to the BBNET directive in the bb-hosts file. i.e.
1.2.3.4 some.host # BBNET:LAX
where LAX is the location tag. You'll noticed that after you start the BBNET host with the tag, the BBDISPLAY and BBPAGER servers will receive status logs with the location appended to the status name. Before, the status name might have been called host.service, now it'll be named host.service@location.
If you use this feature, you will need to give each BBNET server its own location tag. If you forget to give a location to one of the BBNET servers, the tests from that server will be overwritten by the "merged" status log created from the other locations.
You can specify directives to a BBDISPLAY that defines how to calculate the resulting status log and also how it appears on the display. Details are available in the "Handling identical tests from multiple locations" and "Creating display zones" pages.
Location tags should not be more than 15 alphanumeric characters.