Analyze an Application's Behavior

   Steps:

1. Create a traffic class if one does not already exist for the traffic you want to analyze.
   

   For example, if you want to analyze the behavior of file transfers, then you probably don't need to do anything because the presence of FTP traffic automatically prompts PacketWise to create FTP classes.
   
   But if you want to analyze file transfers from a certain server, then create a new traffic class under the FTP class that sub-classifies FTP traffic by server (for example, a class called Inbound/FTP/ServerName).
   
   For more information, see Traffic Tree Overview and/or Traffic Classification Overview.
   
   

2. Make sure enough time has elapsed for PacketWise to gather sufficient metrics for the class. If in doubt, wait for two or more business days.
   
   
3. Determine your application's peak and average bandwidth consumption over time. Use the Analyze Bandwidth Usage Patterns recommendation for help.
   
   
4. If your application is interactive, measure its performance with end-to-end response times. Or determine if slowdowns are due to slow servers or a sluggish network. Use the Analyze Application Response Times recommendation for help.
   
   
5. Determine how much of the bandwidth devoted to your application is actually traffic that is traversing the network multiple times to result in successful receipt (retransmissions). Use the Evaluate an Application's Efficiency recommendation for help.
   
   

6. Track the hosts that contribute most traffic to your traffic class by setting PacketWise's Top Talkers and/or Top Listeners features. Top Talkers displays the top 20 generators of a class' traffic, and Top Listeners displays the top ten recipients of a class' traffic. Once set, both of them have an associated icon that appears in the Monitor Traffic window ( for Top Listeners and for Top Talkers).
   
   A sample Top Listeners list for an HTTP class appears below.
   

   Examples of how to use Top Talkers (TT) and Top Listeners (TL):

   • Use TT on HTTP to reveal the most popular websites.
   • Use TL on a traffic class for the three most popular sports sites to reveal your top sports fans.
   • Use TL on the current music-download application's traffic class to reveal those that retrieve the most music.
   • Use TT on the same class to reveal servers most tapped as music sources.
   • Use TT on an Oracle traffic class to reveal the most active Oracle servers.
     
     
7. If your application is one of the ten highest bandwidth consumers on your network, use the top ten tab or the Top Ten pie chart to analyze its usage with respect to the other nine.
   
   
8. If you want even more detail on your application than these steps have provided, try a few of PacketWise's command-line commands. For example, explore traffic flow to see the status of all active connections for your traffic class or traffic history to see details on your application's recent flows.