Synthetic Monitoring: October 2020 Update - kentik

Kentik's Product and Engineering teams are at it again this October 2020: a whole batch of new features have been delivered to delight our Synthetic Monitoring users - test configuration options got extended to allow the following

we added 1 second test frequencies
IPv4/v6 granular test configs
new Network Test protocol choices

Read on and enjoy!

Testing Frequency

Kentik has introduced new testing frequency options that range from every 15 seconds down to every second. Furthermore, we have structured pricing for sub-minute synthetic tests to be very attractive. Kentik asks, “Your traffic is continuous, so why isn’t your synthetic testing?”

For the first time in the industry, Kentik makes synthetic testing practical for mission-critical applications such as machine, factory and warehouse automation, where high-frequency testing is required, missing nothing.

Only Kentik makes continuous synthetic testing affordable. Continuous testing is critical for latency-sensitive use cases such as machine automation.

Per Test Configuration Options

We’ve added new options under the Advanced menu when creating new tests. Users can increase the number of probes sent per test (to gather more data points) or dial it down (to prevent flooding the network).

When editing in Test Control Center, the Advanced Options menu has several new options.

IPv4/v6

Users can now control whether a test will target both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses or just one type. This is particularly useful in Hostname and Autonomous tests, where we find a mix of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

Users now have the option of controlling whether a test will target both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

TCP “Ping”

Choosing TCP (as an alternative to ICMP) at test creation time and specifying a destination port to test towards will result in a test that will send a certain number of TCP SYN probes and either expect a SYN-ACK or RST in response. This is currently only applicable to ping tests (not trace) and requires ksynth (agent) 0.0.6 or newer.

Users can choose TCP as an alternative to ICMP at test creation time.

Reverse Path for Site-Mesh tests

Hovering over a subtest in a site-mesh test will now show path metrics in both directions and highlight both tests.

Hovering over a subtest in a site-mesh test shows path metrics in both directions and highlights both tests.