Driven by strong interest since its launch a couple of months ago, our Synthetics Monitoring product added a slew of new features that are sure to delight. Here is a summary of the significant additions and changes that happened over the months of November and December 2020.

Web - HTTP Server Test

The new HTTP Server Test allows you to quickly set up an HTTP GET style test to a web server and optionally run ping tests towards the resolved IP address. Depending on whether you are a network engineer mainly interested in whether a server is reachable or an application engineer interested in the specifics of what is causing an application to be unresponsive, we’ve got you covered with custom HTTP error codes. Any error codes you specify will be treated as a “pass” if returned by the web server.

Test results for the HTTP Server Test show the status code and the average time to last byte metrics, and the response size so you can spot anomalies in the amount of data returned from the requests.

DNS - Server Monitor Test

The new DNS Server Monitor Test allows you to test the performance of one or more DNS servers associated with a hostname.

Test results show you the resolution time and any returned results (NS, MX, A, AAAA records…).

Traceroute-based Network Path View

The traceroute-based network path view is a beautiful traffic visualization as it flows from your test points (agents) to specific endpoints (IP hosts, web servers, DNS servers or even other agents). It shows a hop by hop view and makes it very easy to quickly dig down to the root of the problem that is causing performance problems in your network and impacting your end-users’ experience with your applications.

• View hop-by-hop path from source to destination, with nodes color-coded to reflect the Autonomous System (AS) of which they are part.
• Highlight links that exceed a certain latency and nodes that exceed a certain loss to narrow down the problem and then filter down to specific agents to reduce the amount of traces and easily find the problem’s source.
• Use the traceroute explorer to quickly identify changes in AS_Path and the number of hops that may be impacting performance.
• Collapse nodes down to Autonomous Systems (ASNs) to quickly know which specific network the problem may be.
  • Click on any node to view detailed information including, AS name and number, geo-location, ingress and egress interface type, utilization and capacity.
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Alert Incident Log

Alerts can be configured per test while creating tests and will show up in the new Incident Log on the Performance Dashboard.

• Select a time range and then hover over a specific time slice to see a summary count and any alerts opened during the selected time slice
• Quickly zoom in on active alerts and follow the links to the specific test
  • For cleared alerts, the start and end times are displayed
    

Alerts are triggered based on preset or user-defined test health criteria (for warning, critical states) and based on user-defined alert policies that can be configured per test.

Alert Notifications (Email, Slack and more)

Get notified as soon as an alert is fired via email, Slack or your notification system of choice through a custom webhook.

Configurable Test Health Thresholds

Different applications have different requirements for performance. Some may be more tolerant towards jitter while others may not. Configurable threshold for packet loss, jitter, latency, and time to last byte allows you to control what is considered a healthy or an unhealthy test result.

PDF Exports

Easily export data from the Performance Dashboard, the Test Control Center and the Agent Management page. Exporting as a PDF runs in the background and notifies you through a banner.

Autonomous Testing Enhancements

Autonomous tests are a Kentik-unique concept that free you from the burden of identifying specific destination IP addresses and setting up tests one by one by leveraging real flow data to find, automatically set up and periodically refresh network tests.

You start by picking a specific type of entity (ASN, CDN, country, region or city) that you would like to test performance towards. Kentik shows you a list of entities of a specific type, ordered by the amount of traffic you have going towards it.

Selecting an entity (like an ASN or CDN) starts to run a query automatically for the top sites with traffic towards that entity. Testable sites without agents have a recommendation to “Add Agent.”

Get a quick description of the test by clicking the help link.

Dynamic Flow (Real Traffic) Charts in Test Details

The static sparklines representing the correlated flow traffic in the synthetics test details pages are now dynamic and interactive to allow for a more straightforward correlation of spikes to real traffic. Inbound and outbound traffic now span the entire horizontal space and are arranged one above the other to improve usability.