Monitor critical network paths (NetPath)

Review a graphical node-by-node display of critical network paths. With NetPath, you can see how your network is delivering applications to your users, whether paths to key applications are up or down. NetPath also helps you identify where a network problem is and who is responsible for it.

1. Deploy a probe on a computer. The probe discovers and tests the network path the traffic takes to any network endpoint. See Add and manage NetPath endpoints.

2. Review the NetPath tab. Click the Network area overview > Diagnostics > NetPath. The tab lists all endpoints defined in your organization.

   • Click an endpoint row to display the Inspector Panel for the endpoint.

   • Click the endpoint name to display Endpoint Details, Probe Details, and the Path for the endpoint in the tab.

     Grey nodes without a description are usually timed-out by a firewall.

   • Click a probe in the Probes Details widget to display the corresponding path below.

   • The Graph widget displays the path from the probe to the endpoint. Click a node or connection in the Graph widget to display details about the node/connection in the Inspector Panel.

     

   • To zoom in/out in the Graph widget, click into the widget and use the mouse wheel.

   • Scroll down in the Graph widget to see the timeline. The timeline represents each NetPath data poll. Click an item to display data for the selected moment. Green items mean that reaching the path was successful, red items mean that the path failed or has reached the critical status.

   • To change the timeline, move the slider below the timeline.

   • To alert on specific metrics for an endpoint (latency, packet loss, or status), click the vertical ellipsis at the end of the row, select the appropriate Create Alert on item and complete the wizard. See Create an alert based on a template.

     To access the vertical ellipsis menus, your user account needs the Alerting > Settings permission. See Agents.

Interfaces

When a you add a network device in the Network Collector for monitoring with SolarWinds Observability, you can specify interfaces you want to monitor. See Add a network device.

To see a list of monitored interfaces on a network device, find the device in the Entity Explorer and click the Interfaces tab.

The Interfaces tab displays a donut chart showing the number of interfaces monitored on the selected device, grouped by their status. The time series widget next to it displays historical interface statuses.

Click an interface to go to the interface details view. See Interface metrics and Network widgets for details.

To see a list of all monitored interfaces, click Explore, and then select Network Interfaces in the drop-down list at the top of the page.

Volumes

When a network device's volume elements are detected and monitored, they are listed in the Volumes tab, with an overview of their status, size, percentage of used space, and the volume type.

To monitor volumes on a device, add the device in Network Collector Web Console, and make sure the volume is selected for monitoring. See Add a network device.

Click a volume to display volume data. See Volume metrics and Network widgets for details.

Sensors

If hardware health sensors are detected on a monitored network device, you can see the list of all monitored sensors on the device in the Entity Explorer, in the Sensors tab for the network device details view.

Use the search and filter options to find the sensor you are interested in and click the sensor. You will see an overview of data for the sensor and an Alerts tab with a list of unresolved alerts relevant for the selected device.

Click a sensor to display sensor data. See Sensor metrics and Network widgets for details.

Flows

If you collect NetFlow on your devices, flow details are available in the Network devices area overview or in the Flows tab for a monitored element's details view. Flow details are collected based on the Orion.Netflow.Flows.Bytes metric. See Flow metrics.

Filter flow data to display only communication inside the organization, outside of the organization or all flow data

Click the filter icon on a Flow tab, and select the Traffic Direction you want to apply. You can select multiple filter options at the same time.

• No filter selected: All flow data is displayed in the charts.

• East/West: Only flows from within the organization are displayed.

• North/South: Only flows regarding communication outside of the organization are displayed.

• Not classified: IPv6 and IPv4 multicast traffic.

Filter flow data based on time

Use time filters in the upper right part of the screen. To use a custom time range, scroll down and select Custom at the bottom of the drop-down list.

Filter flow data based on endpoints, protocols, applications, advanced applications, countries, or domains

To quickly display flow data for a specific endpoint, protocol, application, advanced application, country, or domain, click the filter icon on a Flow tab, and select the filter you want to apply.

You can apply the filters to all flow data in the Network area overview, to flow data from a specific device in the Network Device Details view, or to flow data from a specific interface in the Interface Details view.

Find network devices exporting flows (Entity Explorer)

To quickly filter out network devices that export flow data in the Entity Explorer, use options in the Last Received Flows filter.

Find devices exporting the most flow data

To determine devices that export the most flow data, click Network in the left-hand navigation, activate the Flows tab and scroll down to Top Flow Sources.

To see the interface exporting the most flow data on a device:

1. In the Network area overview > Flows tab, go to Top Flow Sources table.

2. Click a device name in the Name column in the table. This opens the Flows tab on the device details view.

3. Now on the Flows tab for the device, scroll down to the Top Flow Sources table. The table shows a list of top flow-exporting interfaces on the device.

Filter by domain

Select a domain to filter the data. If there is no data from the selected domain, no data is displayed, for example if all traffic is from private IP addresses in an internal network.

See Add a network device.

Ports

To monitor ports add a device that supports ports for monitoring, such as a switch.

This requires a fresh installation Network Collector 2022.4 or later, not supported on Network Collectors upgraded to 2022.4 or later.

For monitored switches, you will see a Ports tab in the Entity details view with information about used/free ports, ports usage over time, and details, such as port status, IP, vendor, or MAC address. See Network widgets.

Expand ports to display related endpoints (if available).

To find ports, you can:

• Use the search bar and search by port names.

• Filter ports by their endpoint data.

VLANS

If you add a device with VLANs, the node details page includes the VLANS tab, listing all VLANs on the device.

Expand a VLAN to see more details, such as the VLAN ID, state, tag, and the list of interfaces that build the VLAN.

Wireless Controllers and Thin Access Points

If you add a wireless controller node for monitoring, the node details page includes the Access Points tab, listing thin access points available on the wireless controller. You can switch the display to the Grid View or display access points in a Topology View.

Click an access point to display a list of connected clients in an Inspector Panel.

Get an overview of monitored controllers, access points, or clients

1. Click Network in the left-hand navigation, and then click the Wireless Controllers tile.

2. Select the item you want to list in the Type drop-down list.

   When you filter by controllers, click into a controller row to display the Inspector Panel with more details about the controller.

   

See Wireless Controller and Thin Access Point metrics.

Routing

For monitored routers (devices of the Router type), you can see the Routing tab in the Entity Details view.

Routing information includes top flapping routes, routing neighbors, default route changes, or the routing table.

Firewalls (VPN tabs)

When you observe a network device that is a firewall, the device details view includes two extra tabs with relevant details:

• Site-to-Site VPN: lists Site-to-Site tunnels on the device.

• Remote Access VPN: lists remote access tunnels on the device.

Available details differ based on the firewall vendor. Supported devices: Palo Alto firewalls and Cisco ASA firewalls.

SD-WAN

When you add a network device that is an edge network device (its device type is SD-WAN), the device details view includes an SD-WAN tab with health details and more information on WAN utilization, WAN uplinks, tunnels, and relevant interfaces.

On Networks Overview, you can see an additional SD-WAN tile that filters out monitored SD-WAN widgets. Hover over a SD-WAN device name to display more details in the Inspector Panel.

Load Balancers

When you observe a network device that is an F5 load balancer, you can monitor the status and availability of servers or resources in the pool. Load balancer details are available in the Network area overview.

This feature requires the Network and Infrastructure subscription. See Network and Infrastructure Observability.

Config Management

When a Network Collector or Cloud-Connected Hybrid Cloud Observability poll configuration data, you can see the configurations in SolarWinds Observability SaaS, as the Config Management tab in the device entity details view.

Configurations are displayed only for "NCM nodes". If no configurations for a node are displayed in the Config Management tab, log in to the web console for your Network Collector or Cloud-Connected Hybrid Cloud Observability and ensure that the node is an "NCM node". See Set up configuration monitoring (Network Collector) or Add nodes as NCM nodes.

Every 45 minutes, the system checks for outdated configurations. Configurations older than 30 days are deleted.

View configurations

1. In the Entity Explorer, find a device for which you are gathering configurations.

2. Click the Config Management tab to see available configurations. They are saved and named after the time stamp when they were downloaded.

3. To view a configuration, click the download time.

Compare configurations

1. On the Config Management tab, select two items and click Compare.

2. Review the changes and click Close to close the content comparison.