Introduction
In the previous post, we talked about the best practices for creating targets. It’s time to start doing a little more and create targets for a specific reason and goal. We will be using both target templates and custom targets today.
Types of Advanced Tests
There are five major types of tests: Ping, DNS, HTTP, traceroute, and path analysis and each target will use a combination of these in order to gather data on a specific need or use case. These will include:
- DNS Testing
- VoIP Testing
- VPN Testing
- Gateway Testing
- Agent to Agent
DNS Testing
While setting up a DNS resolution test every 30s (by default) will check if the FQDN is resolvable, that is not all of the information that you need. The running joke is, it’s always DNS but we need to be sure that DNS is not the issue. So what we will need to do here is navigate to Targets>+ Add Target>Custom Target and name it whatever follows your naming scheme and go next.
From there fill in the FQDN and select DNS, then expand the testing like you see below
From here, fill in the specific DNS server that you want to use, oftentimes you will use your internal server but for this example, we will use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. To do 2 of these, you will need to click the +1 DNS button again and click save. When you collapse both it should look like this:
From there, we will need to add one resource for each DNS Server, so in this case two. The FQDNS for these will be 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and the tests will be ping and either traceroute or path analysis. My preference is path analysis as it gives a more detailed understanding of agent pathing (20 traceroutes vs 1) but either works fine.
From here, the rest is the same and you select next, assign to agents/groups, assign alerting profiles and then click save. For me, I included this expanded DNS testing as part of my google testing, which is also an option as well.
Now with this test you’ll be able to test specific DNS servers to see if the issue is in fact DNS or something else. This will also tell you the issue is your DNS or the public DNS.
VoIP
This is a bit simpler in regards to setup. You may already have these targets configured but if not here are our most recent blogs regarding VoIP. Go to the target configured and click the cog then Edit Target. Expand the target then expand ping and select “Calculate Jitter and Mos” then click save. Finish up by assigning agents/groups and the alerts and save it.
Now, when you look at your real time ping graphs that have jitter and MOS enabled, you can see the results on the retail graph. Anything below a 3.6 is most likely impacting the users and 4.4 is a perfect score. In the example below, during a 15 minute call, the MOS score dipped below three five times and two once. And the jitter spiked into the high double digits and nearly 300, with nearly six percent packet loss.
VPN
This one should be even easier to set up. You’ll need to navigate to Targets>+ Add Target>Target Templates>VPN and from there you simply put in the FQDN or IP of the gateway, add it to the list.
Finish up by assigning agents/groups and the alerts and save it. You may want to go back and edit the target to rename and change the label on it. Alternatively, you can just create a singularly ping test as well through custom targets, whichever is easier for you!
Gateway Test
This one is even easier than the VPN test, but let’s talk about this first. The gateway test is designed to detect each agent’s unique gateway IP and ping it every five seconds. This is great especially for large RWA deployments that may use ten or more default IP’s for their gateway. This also works for Network Agents as well!
To configure this, you navigate to Targets>+ Add Target>Target Templates>Gateway then click “+ Add” then finish up by assigning agents/groups and the alerts and save it.. Unlike the VPN, you shouldn’t have any need to edit this in the future and while you can build it custom with the FQDN of gateway, this method is significantly easier.
Agent to Agent
As long as an agent is on the same network or subnet, or can reach the other agent through a tunnel such as a VPN, you can run tests from 1 agent to another. While you might be tempted to do a giant mesh test of communication, remember that you’re limited to 50 tests per agent. And Agent availability and alerts will tell you if a site goes down anyway.
Where this is useful is testing to the cloud or data center. If you deploy an agent in a data center or in the cloud with a reachable IP, you can then have some of all of your agents target that agent as a test. This is better than simply testing against AWS or google.com as you’ll be able to test deeper into the network and get more statistics and information about performance and reachability.
To do this, navigate to Targets>+ Add Target>Custom Targets and name it whatever matches your naming scheme. Then for the address, type in the name and then select it from the dropdown list as seen below:
It will fill the address with the IP address but we recommend doing it this way to be sure there are no typos or errors. Then you’ll typically select ping and path analysis, but if this cloud hosts key applications, DNS, HTTP and VoIP (jitter and MOS) could be valuable as well. Finish up by assigning agents/groups and the alerts and save it.
Mistakes to Avoid
I know I’ve said this before but don’t overdo it. You don’t need to test every public DNS server around or configure a giant mesh test between the agents. The data centers and cloud make the most sense here. Remember, NetBeez generates a lot of data, being able to quantify and analyze the data is very important
If you want some suggestions on analyzing the data, we actually JUST released AI Summaries in version 14.5 for you to check out!
Conclusion
As I’ve said before, NetBeez is an incredibly powerful tool that can give you a LOT of data about your network. There is a lot more you can do with it to really dial in the testing and data that you’re getting. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface and have quite a bit more to share with you and we are open to suggestions on future topics!