Viewing application traffic volume
The Applications report shows the top applications by volume and their average throughput. Volume and throughput data for single applications can be graphed by clicking the filter icon for the desired application in the data table below the graphs. Inbound and outbound LANLocal area network application traffic is reported separately.
To show all application traffic, add a category to represent the remaining application traffic on your network. Doing this allows the cumulative stack on the throughput chart to represent all the application traffic moving through the appliance.
This will help you understand the significance of the top applications relative to the whole. In addition to showing a stacked cumulative view, you can display the throughput as a line chart with a common zero baselineused by monitors and performance reports to establish a standard by which sunsequent performance can be measured. You can also display the application volumes as a pie chart.
These charts can answer questions such as:
- What are the top applications on my network?
- Are those top applications significant relative to the entire traffic?
- How much bandwidth does my FTP application typically take?
- Could one application be choking out the other application traffic?
- Do any of my top applications appear to be limited?
Using this information, you can determine if you need to create policies for high data volume applications and applications that tend to have large data volume spikes. You may want to create protection policies for your business critical apps and limiting policies for high volume non-business critical applications like recreational applications. For more information refer to Adding a policy to the policy tree.
The Applications report shows traffic volume graphed over time.
NOTE
Average bandwidth is calculated as the total bits observed in the charting interval divided by the number of seconds in that interval. E.g. For a chart with an hour of data, the intervals are five minutes.
If you drilled into the applications chart from any of the virtual circuitlogical definitions that partition a a physical network circuit and used to determine what traffic passes through it and how much, subnets, or hosts charts, then the relevant virtual circuit, subnet, or host will be shown on the filter bar below the button bar. To turn off the filtering, click on the close 'x' in the filter tag.
Where do I find this report?
To access the report:
- On your browser, open the Exinda Web UI (
https://Exinda_IPInternet protocol_address). - Key-in the User and Password.
- Click Login.
- Go to Monitor > Applications > Applications.
Monitoring reports can be exported as a PDF document, saved as a scheduled report, or can be printed directly from the Web UI. For more information refer to Exporting, printing and scheduling reports.
To filter the report data
Various components on the screen can be toggled on and off by clicking buttons above the charts. Note that when generating a pdf report of this screen, the toggle states are taken into account. That is, if you had toggled off the outbound charts, they will not be present in the pdf.
- Host Type: When you first load the Hosts report, Internal hosts are graphed by default. Click the Internal hosts button and then select External hosts to change the type. Note that you cannot graph both internal and external hosts at the same time.
- Traffic Type (Inbound/Outbound): By default, both Inbound and Outbound traffic is graphed. Click either the Inbound or Outbound option to hide the data, including all the carts and the data tables below the charts.
- Chart Type: Toggles on or off the time series charts and allows selecting stacked area display versus a line chart display.
- Pie: Toggles on or off a colour-coded Pie chart to the left of the Top Listeners and Top Talkers list.
- Remaining Traffic: Append or hide the Remaining Traffic category below the Top Listeners and Top Talkers lists. This option toggles on or off the presence of a category for all the remaining applications summed together.
- Data Details: Toggles on or off the data tables below the time series charts.
- Mouse Hover: Hover the mouse pointer over the graph to view data throughput at a given date and time.
Turning on or off the remaining traffic category
Toggle the Remaining Traffic button on the button bar. When toggled on, a grey chart series will appear in all charts (throughput, pie, top applications) representing all the applications on your network that are not explicitly represented in the top applications. If the remaining applications show vastly more data volume than the top applications, then the top applications may look insignificant relative to the total, and so you may need to toggle off the remaining traffic category to see the relative differences and usage patterns of the top applications.
Changing the throughput chart to stacked area charts or line charts
Press the down arrow next to the dropwdown list at the top of the page and choose which chart type to show. The line chart shows the applications against the common zero baseline so they can be compared to each other and the pattern of a specific application is clearer. You can look for particular patterns such as spikes or flat tops.
Determining if one or more applications may be choking out the other application traffic
View the throughput charts with the remaining traffic category toggled on. For any periods where the cumulative throughput is especially high (compared to the pipe size that this appliance is managing) is there an application or two that is consuming a significant portion of the bandwidth. If so, that application may be choking out other application and would be a candidate for control. Please note that you many need to go to the virtual circuit chart and filter the applications by the individual virtual circuits to understand whether an application is choking out others since the virtual circuits share bandwidth and an application my overrun one virtual circuit but not others.
Determining if any of the top applications appear to be limited
View the throughput charts as a line chart with the remaining traffic category toggled off. If any of the lines representing the applications have raised flat tops, this may represent that the application is being limited by a policy or the capacity of your pipe.
Charting any single application
VERSION INFO
Filtering to show any single application is available in 7.0.1 and above.
In the data table, each application has a filter icon on the right-hand-side of the row. By clicking on the filter icon, as shown below for Google Encrypted, only the selected application will be charted.
Click filter icon beside desired application to chart that application.
Applications are filtered to only show 'Google Encrypted'
While in filter mode, any other application filter icon can be clicked to change which application is charted.
To remove this filter and return to the top application set, click the 'x' on the green 'App: Google Encrypted' filter tag.
To show more applications or fewer applications in the top applications chart and the throughput chart
The number of applications shown are configurable by using the Chart Items setting on the Configuration > System > Setup > Monitoring page. Please note that this configuration applies to all charts on the appliance. See Monitoring Configuration.
How do I interact with the new time-series & bar chart reports?
- To understand how to set the desired time range for a chart, see Setting the Time Range.
- To understand how to the charts interact and what the toggle buttons do, see Understanding How Charts Relate.
- To understand how to drill into the data to find particular filtered data, see Drilling into the Data.
- To understand the difference between inbound and outbound traffic, see Understanding Traffic Direction.
- To understand how many data points are shown for each time period, see Understanding Traffic Granularity.
- To understand how to print the report or schedule the report, see Printing and Scheduling Reports.