The Network Dashboard
Clicking on the Network tab page in Figure 1 will reveal the Network Dashboard, which allows you to zoom into the performance and problems pertaining to the Network layer and related layers of a target application/device. Using this dashboard, you can:
- Determine whether/not the application/device currently experiences / has in the past experienced network-related issues;
- Accurately identify the network parameters that are currently failing;
- Understand the current network configuration;
- Analyze network performance over time, study the trends in network connectivity and usage, and accurately deduce problem/performance patterns.
- Identify persistent problems with network health and the network-related layers responsible for the same;
The contents of the Network Dashboard and the subsystems it offers for analysis could slightly vary depending upon whether the target is an application or a network device. While the Network Dashboard of a host/application enables you to focus on both the network and TCP connections handled by the target, the same for a network device sheds light on the network connectivity of the device and the traffic handled by the network interfaces supported by the device. Accordingly, the Network Dashboard of an application/host offers Network and Tcp as its Subsystems, and that of a network device offers Network and NetworkInterfaces as its Subsystems. If the target application is a Windows-based one, then the Subsystems list will include an additional WindowsInterfaces option, which provides the performance information related to the traffic handled and bandwidth used by the network interfaces supported by the system.
The Network Dashboard of Hyper-V servers on the other hand, will additionally support a Hyper-V Switches and a Hyper-V Network Adapters sub-system. Similarly, the Network Dasboard of a vSphere/ESX server will include an additional VirtualNetwork sub-system.
The sections that follow will discuss each of these subsystems at length.
