Using the Performance Tab

The Performance tab in the Bigleaf Web Dashboard provides granular performance information about an overall site, and each circuit at that site. The Performance tab is one of the most useful tools in the Dashboard in that it displays specific connectivity problems and the times they occur. It accurately identifies latency, loss, jitter, and other symptoms of circuit degradation.

The information is beneficial when troubleshooting issues with ISPs, showing precisely where the performance issues are, when they occurred, and how long they lasted. The Overall section in the Performance tab shows the combined performance of all ISP providers for a site.

On all graphs in the Performance tab, traffic above the baseline is download traffic and traffic below the baseline is upload traffic.

Tip: Selecting the Padlock icon in the upper right corner of any graph zooms in or out on the graph's history. As the selection pointer moves over the graph area, a balloon with the event time and graph legend appears.

Below are details about the different graphs on the Performance tab.

Overall Throughput

This graph gauges a site's cumulative traffic consumption. In the example below, the site uses little bandwidth on average, with some spikes up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) during peak times in the download direction.

Latency and Loss

This graph displays the average latency the site experiences, and highlights occurrences of loss. In the example below, the Latency is shown in green, and is measured in milliseconds (MS) along the left side of the graph. The Loss percentage is shown in Red, and is measured along the right side of the graph.

Individual  circuit graphs

Each circuit at the site is graphed in three categories: Throughput, Capacity, and Health Alarm Levels.

Throughput

This graph shows how much of the circuit's bandwidth is used, and at what times. For example, in the graph below, it shows that the traffic spike in the Overall Throughput graph (shown above) traverses the WAN1 Circuit.

Capacity

This graph maps the detected  bandwidth of the circuit. This graph below shows a slight variance in circuit bandwidth in the upload direction.

Health Alarm Levels

This graph is the most useful for troubleshooting. Bi-directional jitter, latency, and loss are plotted, along with the times they occur. An example of using this graph is in determining VoIP problems. VoIP is sensitive to jitter more than other forms of circuit degradation. If calls are choppy and one of the site's circuits exhibits high levels of jitter, you can isolate that circuit when testing, examine each hop in the route, and significantly expedite the resolution of the issue.

The example below shows a bi-directional loss at level 7, a complete loss of connectivity, through various points over the last day. Jitter (down is yellow and up is blue) is also high on this circuit.

Quality of Service (QoS)

The Performance tab helps you visualize our QoS, offering additional insight into circuit performance beyond bandwidth, loss, and latency. It shows the mixture of traffic classification that contributes to traffic management on the WAN circuits. This feature currently shows QoS information only for the per-circuit throughput charts on the Performance tab.

Hovering your mouse over the chart provides detailed information.