Use this page to troubleshoot network performance issues. It contains several tests you can run to see detailed information to help determine why you’re seeing issues.

Before running diagnostics tests, check the site's Performance Charts for throughput and latency information. Bigleaf continually monitors the overall health and performance of your network circuits and results are shown in these charts. The Performance Charts are the most reliable source of information about circuit and network health.

Ping test

Troubleshoot the reachability of a remote IP or host. This test is helpful when the Performance Chart indicates that a circuit is having performance issues. It performs a ‘round trip’ test to help verify where a problem is occurring.

Source device

You can start the test from your primary router (CPE), primary tunnel endpoint (TE), or secondary TE.

Source interface

Where to start the PING test on the device. For example, if you’re running a PING test from the primary router, you can choose where on the router to start the PING. You can start it from:

• A WAN interface, which tests outside the Bigleaf tunnels.
• A tunnel interface, which tests inside the Bigleaf QoS-enabled tunnels.
• The LAN, which allows the router to choose which upstream interface is used to send the traffic. You can also run the test from a specific circuit.

Destination

The host or IP address to send the PING request to. For example, google.com or 8.8.8.8 (Google’s IP address).

Advanced settings

The default settings for these options are typical for most tests. Change these if you like.

Results

Check the Test Results area at the bottom of the page. Did the destination site respond to the PING request, and in how many milliseconds did it take to receive the response? You can view, save, or print the test results file.

Note: Keep in mind that many internet hosts and firewalls block some or all PING requests, so a negative result may not actually indicate an issue. If a host doesn’t respond, check with the host’s owner to ask if it’s configured to not respond to PING requests.

MTR test

The MTR test indicates the reachability to a remote IP address or host, and shows the path the request took to reach that address or host. It shows every network segment (router) hop on the internet that it traversed to get to a destination. You typically run an MTR test if the Health Alarm Levels chart on the Performance tab shows that a circuit performance is degraded.

When running an MTR test, consider the Advanced Options on the WAN circuit configuration (on the Configuration tab, select Show Advanced Options for a WAN circuit). If for example you’re troubleshooting a VoIP issue, you might find that a WAN circuit is configured to avoid VoIP traffic. So you’d want to run the MTR test on a different WAN circuit.

Source device

You can source the test from your primary router (CPE), primary tunnel endpoint (TE), or secondary TE.

Source interface

You can start the MTR test from:

• The WAN interface, which tests outside the Bigleaf tunnels, and you can see all of the router hops as the request traverses the route.
• The LAN interface, where tests will go through the Bigleaf QoS-enabled tunnels and the Bigleaf router decides which LAN to use. If you run the test through a LAN, you won’t see the router hops through your ISP circuit between your site’s router and the Bigleaf POP since it runs through the Bigleaf tunnel.

Destination

You can run the test to the primary TE, secondary TE, or through the primary TE to an IP host beyond, such as the VPN endpoints you are having issues with, or the VoIP remote public IP address. For general traffic tests, select the primary TE.

Advanced settings

The default settings for these options are typical for most tests. Change these if you like.

Results

Check the Test Results area at the bottom of the page. You can view, save, or print the test results file showing the route information the request produced. For details about interpreting MTR results, see the video Interpreting MTRs.

tcpdump test

This test captures internet packets for analysis. It captures the sent and returned traffic going through an interface and shows the packet error messages that are being returned by the end host.

Bigleaf enables you to capture the transit traffic so you can see the ingress and egress traffic for a specific port. Packet capture data is useful for topology discovery, and troubleshooting issues with DNS resolution failure, VoIP, circuits, and more.

Before running the tcpdump test, consider the Advanced Options on the WAN circuit configuration (on the Configuration tab, select Show Advanced Options for a WAN circuit). If for example you’re troubleshooting a VoIP issue, you might find that a WAN circuit is configured to avoid VoIP traffic. So you’d want to run the tcpdump test on a different WAN circuit. Also review the Performance Charts to see your overall network health.

Source device

You can start the test from your primary router (CPE), primary tunnel endpoint (TE), or secondary TE.

Source interface

You can start the test from the WAN interface and the test will show all the traffic traversing that interface, which can be a lot. You can use the Advanced Settings filters to limit the amount of traffic and data. If you run the test from a primary or secondary tunnel, it shows traffic inside the tunnel with the Bigleaf QoS markings.

Advanced settings

The default settings for these options are typical for most tests. Change these if you like.

Filter

This field is recommended to limit the scope of the test using RegExp syntax (Regular Expression language). If you don’t specify a field value, the test may impact users on your network and the test could run out of buffer space and not complete. There a several possible entries for this field, such as host source, specific port destination, specific port number for DNS, and more.

Direction

Limit the direction of the test. The direction is relative to the port that you’re capturing traffic on. For example, for WAN circuits, traffic coming ‘in’ the WAN port is coming from the internet into the WAN port (downstream traffic), and traffic going ‘out’ of the WAN port is upstream traffic.

For LAN, traffic going ‘in’ the LAN port is coming from your firewall on its way to the internet (upstream traffic), and ‘out’ of the LAN port is downstream traffic. LAN traffic does not have any QoS markings.

Verbosity

This setting determines how much detail is included in the Output column in the Results window. The higher the verbosity number, the more detailed results will be available. This setting doesn’t affect the amount of information captured in the results file; the file always includes complete information.

Duration

The length of time to run the test (recommended 1-5 minutes)

Snapshot

Truncates the results to the IP addresses and eliminates most of the data.

Write to file

When checked, the test results are sent to a file in addition to the Results window.

Show hostnames

When checked, show the host names in the test results

Test Results

See the test results and save the data in a packet capture (PCAP) file to view in a protocol analyzer tool, such as Wireshark, where you can see details about protocols and network traffic. You can use these test results when working with your ISP to definitively show what you’re experiencing and find a resolution.