Monitoring network applications

Network applications in Nexthink help you identify issues such as network congestion, server unavailability, misconfiguration or security restrictions. They allow you to monitor various connection-based services like mail, VPN and directory services. These applications provide valuable insights into the quality perceived by end-users and the usage patterns of these connection-based services across the organization.

Network applications comprise destinations that you can configure as groups of IP addresses, ports and domains. Refer to the Configuring network applications documentation for more details.

Overview

From the chosen application page, open the Overview tab to view dashboards for network application performance and usage, to identify devices, destinations and binaries causing network issues.

The Overview dashboard includes only Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) events data. To monitor User Datagram Protocol (UDP) events for this application, navigate to the Network tab, select the Total number of connections metric, and click the UDP button in the Network view.

Dashboard widgets

The Overview dashboard contains the following widgets:

Connection establishment time

Connection establishment time represents the average round trip time (RTT) for all established connections. A high connection establishment time suggests delays, possibly due to network congestion, server load, or the distance between client and server.

Identify devices with notably long connection establishment times (>100ms) through smart drill-downs, accessible via the kebab menu next to each metric.
The line chart displays recent changes in the metric.

Failed connections

The failed connections metric represents the sum of rejected, no host and no service connections. It signifies the inability to establish communication between client and server, typically due to issues such as network congestion, server unavailability, misconfiguration or security restrictions. These failures can potentially result in service disruptions, data loss or degraded user experience.

The Devices with high percentage of failed connections (>10%) metric helps you assess the impact of failed connections on devices in your environment.
The line chart displays the number of failed connections per failure type over time. Click on the legend below the chart to toggle visibility of different failed connection types. Total represents the cumulative count of all types.

Traffic

Monitor incoming and outgoing traffic to grasp the network's overall activity in terms of data volume.

High Incoming traffic may signal popular content or heavy server load.
Elevated Outgoing traffic may imply active user interactions or data uploads.
Use the line chart to scrutinize sudden spikes or irregular traffic patterns, potentially indicating suspicious behavior.

Devices

View the total number of unique devices with a TCP connection and the total number of TCP connections.

The Connections metric is the sum of Established TCP connections and Failed TCP connections within the selected time period.
Place the cursor over an individual bar to enable a pop-up that includes details.
Each bar on the graph represents the sum of unique devices with a connection event during a specific time interval. Therefore, the sum of all values on the column chart is always equal to, or greater than the total number of devices.

Breakdowns

Analyze metric variations by destinations and other breakdowns.

Switch tabs to see breakdowns by different properties.
Click on a table header to sort by available metrics.
Click on a row in the table to filter the page for the selected element.
Access the underlying NQL investigation of each visualization via the kebab menu in the top-right corner of the widget group.

Note that the Country tab under Destinations, represents the location of the destination point based on GeoIP information. It is distinct from the Country tab under Other breakdowns, which indicates the location of the device when the system captures the connection.

Network

The Network tab has a Network view visualization of connection.events data and metrics specific to the network application. Refer to the Network view documentation for more details.