Network Performance

This article describes how to view network performance in ControlUp for Desktops.

Configure latency targets

By default, managed devices use 8.8.8.8 to run a latency test every 60 seconds and run a traceroute test every 15 minutes. To edit your latency targets, go to Devices > Configuration > Settings > Network Latency.

You can customize up to 3 IP/DNS targets and choose to enable or disable traceroute tests. Note that the first target listed on the settings page is used in some dashboard widgets, so you should make the first target the most important or generally applicable.

When adding a target, you can test using TCP by adding ' tcp:443' to the end of the target IP or DNS (for example, 'google.com tcp:443'). Note that TCP can give longer latency times as it can be slower than ICMP.

Network dashboards

Go to Devices > Overview and select either Network - Latency or Network - Performance from the dropdown list of dashboards.

The Network - Latency dashboard displays the following widgets:

• Latency by Device <latency target> - The top 5 devices with the highest latency to each of your configured latency targets. The widget also shows the average and best latency to the target across all devices.
• Latency by ISP <latency target> - The top 5 ISPs with the highest latency to each of your configured latency targets.
• Longest Traceroute Hops (ms) - The top 5 traceroute hops with the highest average latency. Hover over a bar to see the the latency. Click on a bar to drill down and see hop times for each traceroute test. After drilling down, you can click on the magnifying glass icon on the right side of the grid to see full details of the traceroute test.
• Top ISPs (Device Count) - The top 5 ISPs by number of devices using the ISP.
• WiFi Strength Samples (with Average) - The number of WiFi strength samples broken down into categories (unusable, weak, good, and strong). You can configure the thresholds for each category by going to Configuration > Settings > Web Console. The average WiFi strength (from 0-100) is displayed in the middle of the widget.

The Network - Performance dashboard displays the following widgets:

• Network Usage - The number of devices currently using wired vs. wireless connection. Hover over the chart to see the number of devices using each type of connection, and their average latency.
• Network Usage (MB) - The total inbound and outbound network traffic.
• Devices With High Latency - The number of devices experiencing high latency to the first target configured in your network latency settings page. The thresholds for high latency is written in the widget.
• Key Insights - A summary of important statistics, including how they compare to the previous time period. You can click on the values in the widgets, and the comparison ticker to see more information.
• Latency by Adapter Type - The latency to the first target listed in your network latency settings page, broken down by wired vs. wireless connections.
• Top/Bottom ISP by Latency (WiFi/Wired) - The best and worst ISPs by latency to the first target listed in your network latency settings page. Use the dropdown within each widget to set the minimum number of devices for an ISP to be included in the list. For example, if you select 10, an ISP with only 5 users will be excluded from the widget. 

View network data for a specific device

When you drill down into the details for a specific device, you can see the device's network usage, WiFi strength, and latency to all configured latency targets. If the traceroute test is enabled in your network latency settings page, then the results of the traceroute test appear as a yellow data point in the charts.

You can click the traceroute data point to see the full results of the test. 

When viewing a traceroute result, the numbers displayed in the bar between each hop in the graphic is the time difference between the two hops. The table below the graphic shows the cumulative time at each hop.

For example, in the image above, the bar between hop 3 and hop 4 shows 20ms. This is because the cumulative time for hop 3 was 3ms and the cumulative time for hop 4 was 23 ms (23-3=20).

If there is no time difference between the two hops, or if the later hop responds before the earlier hop (see hops 7 and 8 in the image above), the bar shows 0ms.

If a bar is grayed-out (for example, between hop 5 and hop 7 in the image above), it means that the intermediate hops didn't respond. 

A hop is displayed in orange if it takes an unusually long time to respond.