Generating a Network Analytics Report

This article explains how to generate a Cato Network Analytics report that highlights data related to network usage for sites and SDP users in your account.

Overview of Network Analytics Reports

Cato provides a Predefined Report template that summarizes WAN and Internet network usage for sites and SDP users. In addition, it includes the SLA metrics for site traffic: packet loss, discarded packets, jitter, and latency.

Create the template for the Scheduled or One-Time report with the sites and SDP users that are included in the report over the defined time range. By default, the Predefined Report template for the Network Analytics report shows traffic and data for all sites and SDP users for the past week.

For more about working with Predefined Reports, see Cato Reports.

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Creating a Scheduled Network Analytics Report

Create a new Scheduled report, and define the Filters for the items included in the report. Then define the Report Schedule which defines how often the report is generated - daily, weekly, or monthly. Generated reports are stored in the Cato Cloud, and they can be automatically emailed or downloaded. The Report Schedule also defines the time range that is covered by each report. The time range starts on 00:00 UTC (inclusive) at the start of each period, and ends on 00:00 UTC (non-inclusive) at the end of the period.

You can select the Mailing List of email addresses for the recipients, the list can include Cato Management Application admins and external users.

For more information about Mailing Lists, see Working with Mailing Lists.

To create a scheduled Network Analytics report:

  1. From the navigation pane, select Monitoring > Reports.

  2. From the Predefined Reports tab, click New > Scheduled report. The Scheduled Report panel opens.

  3. Enter the Report Name for the Predefined Report.

  4. In Type, select Network Analytics.

  5. (Optional) In Filters, select specific sites or users for the Predefined Report.

    By default, the Predefined Report includes all sites and users.

    To include multiple sites or users in the report, use the IN operator.

  6. In Report Schedule, configure these settings:

    1. Select the Frequency that the report is automatically sent: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.

    2. For Weekly and Monthly Scheduled reports, in Every select the day that the report is sent.

  7. In Subscriptions, select the Mailing List that receives the report.

    You can click New to create a new mailing list.

  8. Click Save. The report template is added to the Predefined Reports tab.

Manually Generating a Scheduled Report

A new Scheduled report is generated based on the Report Schedule settings. For example, a weekly report configured for Monday, is generated every Monday. You can also choose to manually generate a Predefined Report, and the generated report uses the same time range based on the current day. If an admin manually generates a weekly report on a Tuesday, the time range for the report is the previous 7 days starting from that Tuesday, regardless of the starting day of the Scheduled report.

To manually generate a Scheduled report:

  1. From the navigation pane, select Monitoring > Reports.

  2. From the Predefined Reports tab, find the Scheduled report and click Generate.

  3. From the Generated Reports tab, find the report and click Download.

Creating a One-Time Network Analytics Report

Create a new One-time report template, and define the Filters for the items included in the report. Then define the Time Range that the report covers.

To create a One-Time Network Analytics report:

  1. From the navigation pane, select Monitoring > Reports.

  2. From the Predefined Reports tab, click New > One-time report. The One-time report panel opens.

  3. Enter the Report Name for the Predefined Report.

  4. In Type, select Network Analytics Report.

  5. (Optional) In Filters, select specific sites or users for the Predefined Report.

    By default, the Predefined Report includes all sites and users.

    To include multiple sites or users in the report, use the IN operator.

  6. Select the Time Range of the report.

    For a Custom range, select the start date (From) and the end date (To) for the Predefined Report.

  7. Click Save. The report template is added to the Predefined Reports tab.

    You can also click Save & Generate, and then the report is generated and you can download it from the Generated Reports tab.

Understanding the Network Analytics Report

For sections in the report that show the top sites, charts that show over time show the top three sites, other charts show the top ten sites.

  • Latency measures round trip time inside the tunnel between the site and the PoP in the Cato Cloud

  • Jitter is the difference in time delay in milliseconds (ms) between data packets

  • Packets discarded is the number of packets discarded by the QoS engine due to congestion

  • Packets lost is the number or percentage of dropped packets inside the tunnel between the site and the PoP in the Cato Cloud

These are the sections in the Network Analytics report:

  • Traffic Summary

    • Sites Total Traffic: Chart showing volume and percentage of upstream and downstream traffic for all sites

    • Sites Total Traffic Over Time: Timeline that shows the total upstream and downstream traffic for all sites over the time range

    • SDP Users Total Traffic: Chart showing volume and percentage of upstream and downstream traffic for all SDP users

    • SDP Users Total Traffic Over Time: Timeline that shows the total upstream and downstream traffic for all SDP users over the time range

  • Top Sites by Traffic Consumption

    • Top Sites by Total Traffic: Top sites according to total upstream and downstream traffic

    • Top Sites Traffic Over Time: Timeline that shows the upstream and downstream traffic for the top three sites over the time range

  • SLA Metrics

    • Top Sites by Average Latency: Average latency (in ms) for the top sites over the time range

    • Top Sites by Max Latency: Maximum latency for the top sites over the time range

    • Top Sites by Average Jitter Downstream: Average downstream jitter for the top sites over the time range

    • Top Sites by Average Jitter Upstream: Average upstream jitter for the top sites over the time range

  • Total Sites Packet Loss

    • Lost Packets Downstream: Chart showing downstream packet loss (number of lost packets) for all sites over the time range

    • Lost Packets Upstream: Chart showing upstream packet loss (number of lost packets) for all sites over the time range

    • Lost Packets Downstream %: Chart showing downstream packet loss (percentage) for all sites over the time range

    • Lost Packets Upstream %: Chart showing upstream packet loss (percentage) for all sites over the time range

  • Total Sites Packet Discard

    • Packets Discarded Downstream: Chart showing downstream discarded packets by the QoS engine (number of discarded packets) for all sites over the time range

    • Packets Discarded Upstream: Chart showing upstream discarded packets by the QoS engine (number of discarded packets) for all sites over the time range

    • Packets Discarded Downstream %: Chart showing downstream discarded packets by the QoS engine (percentage) for all sites over the time range

    • Packets Discarded Upstream %: Chart showing upstream discarded packets by the QoS engine (percentage) for all sites over the time range

  • Top Sites Dropped Traffic

    • Top Sites Packet Loss Over Time: Timeline that shows the total packet loss (number of lost packets) for upstream and downstream traffic for the top three sites over the time range

    • Top Sites Packet Discarded Over Time: Timeline that shows the total packets discarded by the QoS engine (number of lost packets) for upstream and downstream traffic for the top three sites over the time range

  • Site Traffic Details - The table shows the following details for up to 100 top sites according to the total traffic volume, sorted in alphabetical order:

    • Site Name: Name of the site

    • Port: Name for the port (defined in the Cato Management Application)

    • Bytes Total: Total traffic for the port in this site

    • Bytes Upstream: Total upstream traffic for the port in this site

    • Bytes Downstream: Total downstream traffic for the port in this site

    • Throughput (Max): Maximum throughput for upstream and downstream traffic for the port in this site

    • Throughput Downstream (Max): Maximum throughput for downstream traffic for the port in this site

    • Throughput Upstream (Max): Maximum throughput for upstream traffic for the port in this site

  • Sites SLA Metrics - The table shows the following SLA details for up to 100 top sites according to the total traffic volume, sorted in alphabetical order:

    • Site Name: Name of the site

    • Interface Name: Name for the interface (defined in the Cato Management Application)

    • Latency RTT (avg): Average round trip time (RTT) for the interface in this site

    • Jitter Upstream (avg): Average upstream jitter for the interface in this site

    • Jitter Downstream (avg): Average downstream jitter for the interface in this site

    • Discarded Packets Downstream: Number of packets discarded by the Cato QoS engine for downstream traffic for the interface in this site

    • Discarded Packets Upstream: Number of packets discarded by the Cato QoS engine for upstream traffic for the interface in this site

    • Lost Packets Downstream: Number of packets lost for downstream traffic for the interface in this site

    • Lost Packets Upstream: Number of packets lost for upstream traffic for the interface in this site

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5 comments

  • Comment author
    JM

    The average latency report seems to include WAN2 last-resort failover links (in our case 4G backup), which skews the results dramatically.

  • Comment author
    Nickolas Hopkins

    Could we get a graph of bandwidth utilization over time to be added to this report?

    This would be helpful for circuit monitoring and tracking utilization.

  • Comment author
    Adam Silva

    Can the reports be setup to automatically run and be emailed on a set interval (i.e. daily/weekly/monthly) to prevent needing to go into the portal and re-download each time?

  • Comment author
    Yaakov Simon

    Adam Silva Thanks for asking about the Scheduled reports feature. We are working on developing this feature now and planning to start EA in several weeks.

  • Comment author
    直己 柄澤
    • Edited

    I also agree with Nickolas's idea. I hope to graph of chronological throughput for each specific major site in a fixed interval (e.g. monthly). 

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