eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by CbrAppStatsTest

The real test of the efficiency and overall health of the branch repeater lies in its ability to accelerate application accesses over the wide area network. If the Citrix Branch Repeater is not configured with the right service class policies, QoS thresholds, or compression rules, slowdowns during application accesses will become inevitable! If this is to be avoided, then administrators must keep an eye on every application link managed by the branch repeater, quickly identify links that are handling more or less data than their capacity, and proceed to fine-tune traffic rules over that link via the branch repeater to ensure optimum performance. This is where the CbrAppStatsTest test helps.

For every application link, this test reports the speed at which the link receives and transmits data and packets, thus measuring how well the branch repeater is managing the traffic over the link and pointing to those links that may require traffic optimizations.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Sent_Volume Indicates the rate at which data was sent over this application link. KB/Sec WAN links have low bandwidth when compared to LAN links. Moreover, any attempt made to send or receive traffic faster than the link throughput can result in congestion. Therefore, the branch repeater should make sure that just about enough data is sent and received over application links to prevent congestion and optimize throughput.

If the values of these measures exceed or are dangerously close to the bandwidth limit of the link, it signals a potential congestion or slowdown of traffic over the link. It also indicates that you may have to reconfigure the branch repeater with more robust QoS and compression rules to prevent such unpleasant eventualities.

Received_Volume Indicates the rate at which data was received over this application link. KB/Sec
Sent_Packets Indicates the number of packets transmitted over this application link. Number WAN links have low bandwidth when compared to LAN links. Moreover, any attempt made to send or receive traffic faster than the link throughput can result in congestion. Therefore, the branch repeater should make sure that just about enough data packets are sent and received over application links to prevent congestion and maximize throughput.

If the values of these measures exceed or are dangerously close to the maximum number of data packets that the link can handle, it signals a potential congestion or slowdown of traffic over the link. It also indicates that you may have to reconfigure the branch repeater with more robust QoS and compression rules to prevent such unpleasant eventualities.
Received_Packets Indicates the number of packets received over this application link. Number
Dropped_Sent_Volume Indicates the rate of traffic not sent over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. KB/Sec QoS (quality-of-service) is a set of policies and priorities assigned to the application traffic prioritized under traffic shaping policies in BR devices. A QoS threshold allows a sender to deliver only as much data as the branch repeater allows it to send, and this data is placed on the link at exactly the right rate to keep the link full but not overflowing. By eliminating excess data, the branch repeater is not forced to discard it. Without the branch repeater, the dropped data would have to be sent again, causing delay.

A high value for these measures could therefore indicate one of the following:

  • The link bandwidth is low and hence the branch repeater has been rightly configured with a QoS threshold that allows only limited data to be sent/received over that link; this excludes a lot of data from transmissions/receptions and maximizes the responsiveness of the link;
  • The branch repeater has been misconfigured with a QoS threshold that forces the link to send/receive much less data than what it can handle; this causes a lot of data to be unnecessarily dropped from transmissions/receptions, affecting the quality-of-experience in the process. In this case, you may have to fine-tune the QoS policy.
Dropped_Received_Volume Indicates the rate of traffic not received over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. KB/Sec
Dropped_Sent_Volume Indicates the rate of traffic not sent over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. KB/Sec QoS (quality-of-service) is a set of policies and priorities assigned to the application traffic prioritized under traffic shaping policies in BR devices. A QoS threshold allows a sender to deliver only as much data as the branch repeater allows it to send, and this data is placed on the link at exactly the right rate to keep the link full but not overflowing. By eliminating excess data, the branch repeater is not forced to discard it. Without the branch repeater, the dropped data would have to be sent again, causing delay.

A high value for these measures could therefore indicate one of the following:

  • The link bandwidth is low and hence the branch repeater has been rightly configured with a QoS threshold that allows only limited data to be sent/received over that link; this excludes a lot of data from transmissions/receptions and maximizes the responsiveness of the link;
  • The branch repeater has been misconfigured with a QoS threshold that forces the link to send/receive much less data than what it can handle; this causes a lot of data to be unnecessarily dropped from transmissions/receptions, affecting the quality-of-experience in the process. In this case, you may have to fine-tune the QoS policy.
Dropped_Received_Volume Indicates the rate of traffic not received over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. KB/Sec
Dropped_Sent_Packets Indicates the number of packets not sent over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. Number QoS (quality-of-service) is a set of policies and priorities assigned to the application traffic prioritized under traffic shaping policies in BR devices. A QoS threshold allows a sender to deliver only as much data as the branch repeater allows it to send, and this data is placed on the link at exactly the right rate to keep the link full but not overflowing. By eliminating excess data, the branch repeater is not forced to discard it. Without the branch repeater, the dropped data would have to be sent again, causing delay.

A high value of this measure could therefore indicate one of the following:

  • The link bandwidth is low and hence the branch repeater has been rightly configured with a QoS threshold that allows only limited number of packets to be sent/received over that link; this excludes a lot of packets from transmissions/receptions and maximizes the responsiveness of the link;
  • The branch repeater has been misconfigured with a QoS threshold that forces the link to send/receive much less data than what it can handle; this causes a lot of packets to be unnecessarily dropped from transmissions/receptions, affecting the quality-of-experience in the process. In this case, you may have to fine-tune the QoS policy.
Dropped_Received_Packets Indicates the number of packets not received over this application link due to QoS threshold settings. Number