Volume OUT/IN

The accumulated volume of traffic for the time period displayed, calculated by adding the volumes from the polled samples.

Peak Traffic (Percentage)

The bits per second values reported is taken from the individual sample with the highest percentage of the configured/discovered line speed for the time period displayed. It will be seen as the highest point on the chart.
Percentage can exceed 100% if bursting is permitted on the line or the line speed in Highlight is lower than actual.

Peak Traffic (bps Actual)

The bits per second value reported is from the individual sample with the highest throughput for the time period displayed. It will be seen as the highest point on the chart. The Highlight peak therefore is the sample with the largest volume, divided by the number of seconds between samples (typically 180 or 60). Note: This may vary from the peak reported on a network device which would use a different measurement interval.
The peak bps figure may differ from the peak bps on the Percentage chart if the Highlight bandwidth has changed during the day. See Troubleshooting traffic load for more details.

Mean Traffic

The bits per second value reported is the average throughput, calculated from the total volume divided by the time period in seconds.
The percentage represents the average throughput as a percentage of the configured/discovered line speed.

Zoom: Expand the graphic to a larger pop out view

 Percentage    Graduated colours are used on the Percentage chart only, not for bps (Actual)

Highlight charts use colour extensively. One significant area for colour usage is in displaying load- or usage-based metrics, such as line utilisation or CPU load. Colours are graduated to make it easy to recognise how these metrics move between lightly and heavily loaded.

Highlight typically generates an alert when utilisation of a resource exceeds 80%. Other resources have a custom defined threshold, i.e. WiFi - Client Count. Colour profiles are below:

This is relevant to a number of graphics in Highlight:

• All link utilisation charts, both 3-D and flat-style
• The traffic, response and load curves on strip charts
• Host / server CPU, memory and disk usage charts
• WiFi Client Count

Percentage

Show the graphs as a percentage of bandwidth used

Actual

Show the graphs as actual speed in bps, the selection of Percentage or Actual will be remembered when you next log in

2D

Show flat two-dimensional graphs [For Week or Month views only]

3D

Show three-dimensional graphs [For Week or Month views only]

By hour   

Zoom in for volume levels in two hour time periods, see next section for more details [For Day view only]

Data table   

Display text results for the current and preceding 6 time periods (these text results can also be switched to Business Hours only view), see separate section for more details

When viewed for today only, the sidebar for each section on the Details page gives an indication if it is currently impacting the associated heat tile colour. This applies for collapsed sections also.

Dormant watches are not expected to pass traffic so a small amount in or out (more than 1000 Kbps by default) changes the side bar colour. Find out more about alerting thresholds.

By hour    This option is only available on a day view. It's not available on week and month views.

For the selected day, this dialog shows more detailed view of both in and out charts. Each vertical line on the chart shows the actual load for an individual poll.

View selected date/time

Set to  24h  for the full day or centre the chart on an hour. For example, selecting  13  will set the chart from 12:00 to 14:00.

View now

This toggle will automatically move to Today and display a period covering the current hour and previous hour. This auto refreshes every polling cycle, typically every 3 minutes. Switching the toggle off will return you to the initially selected date.

Data table shows text statistics for your selected period (day, week or month) and compares it with the previous six periods.

The columns for Traffic OUT and Traffic IN directions are:

Volume

the total volume of traffic that flowed in this direction over this period, in bytes

Average

average traffic level given as both a number of bits-per-second and as a percentage utilisation

95th Percentile

traffic level calculated using 95th percentile, so discarding the highest 5% of samples and showing the highest remaining sample

Peak

the peak traffic or utilisation level seen on the circuit

Availability

the final column is for the overall circuit, learn more about: how we display and calculate availability

Toggle between showing statistics taken across the entire 24-hour period, or just including business hours, using the tabs on the top right of the window. If you select business hours for a 'day' view, you may see empty statistics rows for weekends if these are outside the defined business hours. Learn more about: business hours in Highlight

Note: Highlight calculates statistics for this panel at the end of each day, so on a 'day' view there will be no results for 'today' (the current day).

From the Traffic Load title bar you can download to a CSV file the traffic information which created the displayed charts.

The columns in the download are:

Time

the date and time of each sample (matching the time zone selected on the Details page)

In

the total bytes received since the previous sample

Out

the total bytes sent since the previous sample

Util In

the average speed of traffic calculated from the received bytes value during this time period, expressed as a percentage of the configured/discovered bandwidth In (see example below)

Util Out

the average speed of traffic calculated from the sent bytes value during this time period, expressed as a percentage of the configured/discovered bandwidth Out (see example below)

Error

the number of errors reported in this time period expressed as a percentage of the number of packets received

Discards

the number of discarded packets reported in this time period expressed as a percentage of the number of packets sent

For SD-WAN tunnels, disregard the columns Util In, Util Out, Error and Discards as the data is not returned

Utilisation example

If 491595485 bytes are received over a 3 minute period on a 50M line, the Utilisation is calculated as:
491595485 * 8 = 3,932,763,880 bits
/ 180            = 21,848,688 bits/sec
/ 1,000,000 = 21.85Mbps
/ 50M *100 = 43.7% utilisation

Utilisation note

The timespan used for calculations of utilisation can vary by a few seconds from the specific poll interval. This may be caused by a number of factors including:

• SNMP retries
• slow device responses
• resource contention on the poller

This variation is taken into account when Highlight calculates the utilisation which is presented on screen and in the Utilisation columns. This can lead to differences in utilisation calculations if attempts are made to reverse the calculation assuming a specific poll interval.