Getting Started with Network Monitoring

Overview

This guide introduces AppStatus Network Monitoring and covers:

• Throughput in and out for every host interface
• Connection counts and error rates
• Traffic paths between your services
• Saturation thresholds set against provisioned bandwidth
• Comparison against APM latency to locate the delay

What is Network Monitoring in AppStatus?

Network monitoring graphs what your hosts send and receive, how many connections they hold, and how many packets are dropped or errored — collected by the same agent that reports host metrics, so there is nothing extra to install.

Its main job is to answer one question during an incident: is the request slow because of your application, or because of the link it travels over? Saturation shows up as latency long before it shows up as errors.

Key capabilities:

• Per-interface throughput, with virtual interfaces excluded from alerting
• Connection count and error-rate tracking
• Service-to-service traffic paths ranked by volume
• Saturation thresholds against provisioned, not observed, bandwidth
• Separate thresholds for cross-region paths

What you will see

What the interface view looks like

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Troubleshooting

Operational Guidance

• Saturation shows as latency long before it shows as errors.
• A one-sided traffic pattern usually means retries, not real load.
• Cross-region paths deserve their own thresholds — normal latency there is not normal locally.

Step-by-Step Setup

Network data arrives with the agent, so there is no separate install. The work is choosing thresholds that reflect what your links can actually carry, and excluding the interfaces that would otherwise distort every number.

1. 1

   Confirm interfaces report

   Open the network view and confirm each host lists its interfaces with throughput in and out.

   WhereNetwork → Interfaces
2. 2

   Exclude virtual interfaces

   Keep loopback and virtual interfaces out of alerting. They carry real traffic figures that mean nothing at the fleet level and will distort your totals.

   WhereNetwork → Settings → Exclusions
3. 3

   Set saturation thresholds

   Set thresholds against provisioned bandwidth, not against the peak you have observed. A threshold derived from observed peak alerts on every busy hour.

   WhereNetwork → Thresholds

   Tip

   Give cross-region paths their own thresholds. Normal latency there is not normal within a region.

4. 4

   Compare against APM

   During your next slow period, read network throughput beside APM latency. If the link is nowhere near saturated, the delay is in your application and the network view has already done its job.

   WhereNetwork → Interfaces + APM → Services

Configuration Options

Every option you can set, what each choice means, and what to pick. Use this as a reference while you fill in the form.

Feature Reference

Every feature, where to find it in the app, and what it does. Use this when you know what you want to do but not where it lives.

Next Steps

Continue building your monitoring stack: