This article offers an overview synthetic probes, as well as how to configure synthetic probes in your account and sites to help you monitor your LAN and WAN.
Note
Note: This is an Early Availability (EA) feature that is only available for limited release. For more information, contact your Cato Networks representative or send an email to ea@catonetworks.com.
Synthetic Monitoring lets you monitor the reachability and availability of business critical applications via both the Cato Cloud, or directly through your internet connection. By default, Experience Monitoring gives you insight into all of the applications that traverse the Cato Cloud. In addition, you can configure customized probes and send them to destinations over your links. The probes can be configured to use different protocols to help you identify trends in different segments of your network.
Once you configure the probes, you can use the unified Synthetic Probe policy to create granular rules for when each probe is used. The policy lets you send probes to a group of sites, a specific site, or a system group.
Note
Note: User probe monitoring is supported for Windows Client v5.11, macOS Client v.5.7 (including users without an SDP license)
Cato supports sending different probes to various URLs or IP addresses to monitor different segments of your network. Each probe measures latency and packet loss.
The following probe types are supported, and more than one probe type can be configured per destination:
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ICMP - used to ping a site or device to see that it is up and functioning (supported from Socket v20).
- The following probe types are supported from Socket v21:
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TCP - used to make sure that a 3-step handshake can be established with the target site.
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HTTP and HTTP/s - used to see if a request is received and what response is sent back. A response code of 200 indicates that the site responded with a successful connection.
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DNS - used to send a DNS request to the target, usually your DNS server, and make sure the target name is resolved successfully.
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Once you configure your probes, you can apply them to your sites or users to start monitoring their experience using the Synthetic Probe policy.
The Synthetic Probe policy lets you create a rule-based policy for your Sockets, sites, and users.
Note
Note: Synthetic Probe policy for uses is available only with a DEM probe license.
The Synthetic Probe policy lets you create ordered rules to implement the probes in different situations. For example, you can create a rule to use an ICMP probe for www.sampleprobe.com for all Socket sites around the world, and another rule for www.sampleprobe.ca using a TCP probe for Socket sites in Canada.
In addition, if you have a DEM license, you can create rules in the policy for specific users or user groups. For example, if you want to monitor the application performance of your business applications for all of your Cato Client users and see how their experience is different from the users in the office for the same business application.
Company ABC has a site located in China and is experiencing poor performance when working with one of their internal applications for which they use the Bypass feature.
Using the Synthetic Probe policy, they create 2 probes – one sending TCP packets to their application through the Cato Cloud, and another sending TCP packets to the same application directly over the Internet.
In the Packet Loss graphs above, we see how the packet loss for traffic through the Cato Cloud is much lower than the traffic going directly over the Internet.
This indicates that Cato’s default network rules are optimizing the network performance and ABC doesn't need to use the Bypass feature to send the traffic directly over the Internet
The IT department at Company ABC is receiving tickets for an internal application that users are accessing through the WAN. The IT department configures HTTP probes to monitor trends in the performance to this app.
When they look at the Experience Monitoring graphs for this application, they see that due to high traffic volume, there is increased latency to this site.
Using this information, they create a QoS rule increasing bandwidth to this application.
The Synthetic Probe policy lets you control which probes and probe types are sent to which destinations. In addition, you can also enable collecting specific monitoring data for users even when they are behind a Socket.
To enable or disable the Synthetic Probe policy
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Navigate to Network > Synthetic Probes
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Toggle the Synthetic Probe Policy slider above the rule base to enable or disable the policy
To enable or disable collecting monitoring data for users behind a Socket
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Navigate to Network > Synthetic Probes
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Toggle the User Probes in Office Mode slider above the rule base to enable or disable collecting data behind a Socket
Note
Notes:
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Toggling this feature on and off only affects users with a DEM license
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This setting affects all users regardless of whether they match a specific rule
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The Synthetic Probe Policy is comprised of two stages:
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Defining probes
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Creating rules for when the different probes are used
By default, you have predefined probes to several destinations, some in China and others globally. You can define additional probes for use in your policy. The rules are order-based, meaning, once a rule is matched, it is applied to the site or user.
While you can configure as many probes as you would like, Cato recommends limiting probes for users to less than 50.
To define a probe:
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From the Cato Management Application, navigate to Network > Synthetic Probes.
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On the Probes page, click New.
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Enter a descriptive Name for the probe and complete the following information:
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Probe Type - select any of the supported probes, e.g. DNS
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Destination Type - Select either Internet or WAN
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Transport Type - Determine if the packet is sent via Cato or Bypass
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Destination - the URL or IP address to send the probe to
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Probe Interval - determine how often to send the probes
Note
Note: For users with a DEM license, the internal is hard-coded to 300 seconds.
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Configure if you want to Send on last resort links. Take into account that last resort links are often more expensive
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Click Apply
By default, you have 2 predefined rules - one for all sites and another for sites in China to meet the requirements for Internet traffic in the region. You can configure additional rules in the policy.
Note
If you have a DEM license, you have 2 additional predefined rules - one for all users and another for all users in China.
To configure a rule:
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From the Cato Management Application, navigate to Network > Synthetic Probes.
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On the Policy page, click New.
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Enter a descriptive Name for the rule and complete the following information:
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Type
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Site - Socket site
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User - Cato Client
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Rule Order
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Select the Source
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For Sites, the source is at least one of the following:
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Site - a specific site or sites
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Country - all sites whose origin is the selected country or countries
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System Group - Select the All Sites system group
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For Users, the source is at least one of the following:
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User Group - a specific User Group or User Groups
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User - a specific user or users
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System Group - select the All Users system group
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If necessary, click Add Exceptions to exclude any items from the rule.
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If the rule Type is User, configure the following for the device:
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The platforms on which this rule applies
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The countries in which this rule applies
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The device posture profiles to which the rule applies
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Under Configuration, select the probes to which to apply this rule.
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Click Apply
It will take several minutes for you to start seeing the data in the Experience Monitoring pages of the Cato Management Application. The results are available in the Synthetic Probes graphs.
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