How to Discover Which Virtual Circuit Traffic is Falling Into

Summary

When looking at traffic in the real time monitor, it can be useful to determine which virtual circuit and / or policy it is falling in to, in order to know whether the optimizer is working as expected

Overview

When using the Exinda, part of the benefit is being able to see a real time account of exactly what is going on with the device and the traffic patterns. This can be doing by going into the Real Time Monitoring section of the device - it can be seen under Monitoring > Real Time on any device. It will give a list of current conversations flowing through the Exinda - source, destination, type of traffic, the throughput, etc.

It can be useful to see which virtual circuits the traffic is falling into. This will help administrators find out where the traffic is going in the optimizer and whether it's being optimized as expected on the device. This can be accomplished through clicking the 'Show Policy' button on the Real Time Monitoring page. When this checkbox is active and the page refreshes, the traffic will be grouped based on virtual circuit and policy. Each group of traffic will have a header that summarizes all the traffic falling into each policy, and it will show of the form: [Virtual Circuit Name]: [Policy Name]. While a summarization of entire virtual circuits is not possible on the real time monitoring page, that can be viewed via other reporting mechanisms, such as the Control report.

When examining the grouped traffic, it does not show the bridge that the traffic is falling on. However, by noting the virtual circuit name, it is possible to go back into the Optimizer and examine the list of virtual circuits to extrapolate the circuit; if the circuit only has specific bridges, that will inform the necessary information. However, since the Real Time Monitor will only show virtual circuit names and policy names, it is not recommended to name 2 virtual circuits the same name if they are in different circuits. If this happens, it will be impossible to tell in the real time monitor which circuit the traffic belongs to.

If there is a problem with the optimizer, traffic might be shown under a label of (No Policy). If there is traffic that does not match a virtual circuit, it will be shown under Auto Catch-All: Auto Catch-All.