NetBeez can be helpful in troubleshooting network and application performance issues in large and complex Wide Area Networks (WAN). The real-time data reported by the agents is used to identify the scale (e.g. number of locations) and layer (e.g. network versus application) of performance issues.
The Buzz Tab was designed to provide the user with the most important information that NetBeez collects, such as:
Agent, target, and WiFi performance - The user can review the agent and HTTP target performance distribution. In the agent performance chart, each agent is represented as a dot, and whose XY coordinates are determined by its number of performance alerts (y) and up-down alerts (x) triggered in the last 24 hours. In the agent performance bar chart, each target is included in a bar, based on its 24-hour average HTTP response time.
Open and recent incidents - This section of the Buzz Tab reports all agents and target incidents logged over the past 24 hours. This is a good way to quickly find if there are network or application issues occurring. By clicking on a specific incident, the user can check out what tests and alerts caused the incident to be generated by the system.
An interactive console is built into the NetBeez dashboard and enables users to type commands directly to the reachable NetBeez agents. The console can be used to review log files to troubleshoot agent-related issues, run command line commands that are not yet integrated with the dashboard. Some of the commands that are oftentimes used by network engineers on the interactive console are: nmap, tcpdump, and arp. The interactive console is only available to administrators and is accessible from the agent details view.
Ad-hoc tests can be used to troubleshoot network and application problems on the spot, without having to create a target. The user selects the test type, the source agent, and destination IP, FQDN, or agent where applicable. The command will run for the amount count indicated, and then exit. Results are logged in real-time on the NetBeez dashboard.
Here’s a high-level list of items that are necessary to have a working configuration:
| Agents | - Connect all hardware agents (FastE, GigE, WiFi) to a network switch via the Ethernet interface; make sure that they report to the dashboard; if any agents have problems reporting to the dashboard, here’s the troubleshooting procedure. - Configure the WiFi agents with the appropriate SSID profile to connect to your wireless network(s). - Rename the agents and create agent groups if needed. |
| Targets | Create targets based on the prospect’s monitoring goals; this is a very important part, so make sure to clearly define the applications and network services that they want to monitor. |
| Scheduled Tests | Setup scheduled tests for running throughput tests to other network locations (Iperf), or to the Internet (speed test); VoIP tests can be used to verify the performance and quality of VoIP calls. |
| Users | Invite your team to access the NetBeez dashboard: send them an invitation via email so they can create their own account; review the documentation page on user management to learn more about the different roles and privileges available to users. |
| Email Reports | Setup daily, weekly, or monthly reports to be sent via email as PDF attachments. |
| Alerts and Incidents configuration | Define what type of performance alerts to enable; review the alerts documentation page to learn the difference between up-down, baseline, and watermark alerts. |
| Notifications | Receive notifications on alerts and incidents via SMTP, SNMP, or Syslog; in the alternative, review the list of available integrations, such as Splunk, PagerDuty, and Slack. |