Activate

After a device is fully deployed and tested, activate makes the device live for monitoring on Highlight, previously referred to as promote

Agents

A server running Highlight software that provides a framework for managing Highlight tasks such as device polling, flow collection and performance testing. Results are compiled and sent back to the main Highlight system for presentation and archiving. Devices monitored by Highlight do not use agent software.

Application Domain

An application domain comprises a folder and all its subfolders. All users in those folders see the same AppVis groups. Typically an application domain is set at the top folder for an entire customer organisation.

Alert

Sent via email or SNMP trap to make someone aware of issues on the network. Alternatively, use a webhook to integrate into service management systems.

Alerting Metrics

These are referred to as level 3 metrics in Highlight. See also: Alert messages

• Stability: a measure of outages and availability issues (availability is measured over time, as a percentage and stability relates to whether an element is up or down)
• Load: a measure of traffic utilisation on a circuit or other device
• Health: a measure of performance problems, packet discards, line errors and signal problems (WiFi only)

Bearer/Access Circuit

Like a pipe to transport data - the pipe can be partitioned to fast and slow sections, can be up or down and can be heavily or lightly loaded

Business Hours

The time periods (to the nearest hour) that a business is operational, say Monday – Friday 9am to 5pm; used when displaying traffic trend graphics, for filtering report results, and when generating alerts

Chevron

Part of a heat tile, coloured amber or red and showing issues are improving (pointing down) or deteriorating (pointing up) as trends (performance over time)

Collector

A server which has the function of receiving data being sent by monitored devices e.g. Flow

Containers

A flexible, customised grouping of watches which can be put into one-off or recurring maintenance, displayed as a service tile or used as the basis of a report
Related terms: Watch, Maintenance

Contextual Help

? Pop-ups which provide information relevant to the selected area of Highlight and possibly a link to detailed documentation

DBA: Dynamic Bandwidth Adjustment

Highlight will check and update the bandwidth as part of the 'Device Validation' process for a router, which happens each time router configuration change is detected, or every 24-48 hours if not

Domain

A folder in Highlight, and its subfolders, which is associated with a specific login URL. All user accounts in a domain have to be unique but duplicate user accounts can be configured on several domains, allowing access to disparate parts of the Highlight tree.
Similar term: Application Domain

Dormant

Bearer watches can be set as dormant in the Edit Watch dialog or in the SD-WAN Edit Watch dialog. Dormant interfaces only send stability alerts if the device is uncontactable or Highlight has detected that the underlying connectivity service is unavailable.

Exception

Seen in Highlight's historical reporting. When any metric Highlight is monitoring (for example Load or Response Time) exceeds its target threshold for a certain length of time, it generates an Exception and causes the watch and its associated location tile to change colour (green to amber and then red). The watch now stays in this ‘Exception’ state until the metric returns to normal. The Exceptions report counts the total number of times this watch went into an Exception state and the total time it spent in that state in hours and minutes.
See also: Reporting exceptions

Favourites

Custom defined, frequent use elements in Highlight

Folder

Term used in reference to the Network Explorer tree in Highlight, a parent folder containing subfolders and locations

Heat tile

coloured green, amber or red to show if performance is within or exceeding thresholds used for locations and services

Impact Meter

The small line under the Warning Triangle on a heat tile which gives a rough indication of how many elements associated with the location or service tile have issues; coloured amber or red according to the severity of the issues
Related term: Warning Triangle
See also: Understanding Heat Tiles

Issue Score

An Issue Score is a number from 0 (good, no issues) to 10.0 (bad, lots of issues) which provides a simple way to see how good or bad a location was during the selected time period and to compare it with other locations. Issue Scores are an aggregation of several metrics. Values are adjusted logarithmically so that small-medium problems push the score up quickly, and it then levels off.
See also: Reporting issue score

Link-availability

Relates to the current up/down state of a watch when monitoring Link Health, WAPs or Performance tests. Affects the Stability metric of the heat tile.
Related term: Link-stability
See also: Problem text in Alerts

Link-stability

Relates to changes in the state of a device between samples when monitoring Link Health. Affects the Stability metric of the heat tile.
Related term: Link-availability
See also: Problem text in Alerts

Location

A point in the Network Explorer tree in Highlight which contains reports and tests

Maintenance mode

Watches in maintenance do not send alerts, change the colour of heat tiles nor decrement availability figures
Related terms: Watch, Container

MLE: Multi-link element

An auto-discovered interface, either defined as part of a switch port channel, or as a circuit bonded with others to form a faster logical interface across the WAN.

Network Explorer

The left panel on the Highlight UI which shows the structure of folders, often referred to as the tree

Performance Test

A stand-alone network test associated by Highlight with a bearer or a child watch (class of service or VLAN, for example). The actual test source can be any Highlight reachable device capable of running tests.

Poller

A server with access to a customer's network that validates monitored devices and performs the gathering of statistics via SNMP

Polling cycle

The interval between consecutive SNMP requests from Highlight for information from a watch. Typically every 3 minutes but can vary by partner. This is shown as Poll Frequency on the edit watch dialog and as Poll (secs) in the Admin watch report.

Probe

As used in Precision Delay testing, a probe is one of a rapid sequence of packets whose transmission times are measured to establish accurate jitter and delay statistics

Product Type

An optional text field which is limited to 20 characters and enables service providers to display the service name for a watch rather than the Highlight default name, for example FTTC instead of ADSL.

Reporting API

The Reporting API makes it possible to view Highlight’s summarised data, device inventory and watch folder/location information outside the Highlight Service Assurance Platform. Read more about the Reporting API.

Subwatch

See watch. Also known as 'child watches,' these are discovered watches such as Classes of Service, VLANs and WAPs or created watches such as performance tests. These are typically displayed in Highlight with the parent bearer.
Related term: Watch

Technical Test ("Tech Test")

A test to confirm the configured IP address with security credentials provided is reachable and responsive, used in Admin Pending, when adding a Performance Test, with Application Visibility and when editing a watch to change interface

Time bar

Found in Reporting and Details pages, and in the Hybrid WAN dialog, use to select a given period: any day, week, or month for the past year

Visibility

The visibility setting is applicable to bearer watches, service tiles, folders and alerts and is only shown if you are a service provider administrator. Visibility determines if a service tile, folder or alert will be visible to all users and customers or just to service provider internal staff. There are two options:

• Customer:

  anyone can see the item (this is the default setting)

• Internal:

  the item is only visible internally (for the service provider)

See also: Bearer Watch Visibility, Folder Visibility (referred to as Category) and Alert Visibility

Warning Triangle

In the upper right corner of a location or service tile; shows the number of issues associated with the tile; coloured amber or red according to the severity of the issues
Related term: Impact Meter

Watches

View our What's a watch infographic to see the full picutre of how watches are used in Highlight.

An individual monitoring task that Highlight carries out to collect a specific set of information from a given device at regular intervals. For example, a bearer watch collects traffic, status and health information for a specific circuit or LAN interface, typically every three minutes. Other watch types include switch, host, VLAN, tunnel, Wireless controller, etc. You will also see references to ‘subwatches’ which are usually items associated with, or discovered beneath, a main watch – for example a class of service which is part of a bearer, or a Wireless Access Point (WAP) discovered on a controller.

bearers, Wireless Controller

switches

performance tests

CoS/VLAN/MLE

WAPs

Related terms: subwatch, VLAN, WAP, Wireless Controller

802.11

The protocol (with several iterations) defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for communicating on Wireless Networks. Its purpose is to standardise methods of communication and ensure vendor interoperability.
Related term: WLAN

95th Percentile

the ninety-fifth percentile load value for a line, meaning the busiest that the line gets in normal usage, excluding those occasional peaks which might distort the reading
See also: How the 95th Percentile is calculated

ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

a data communications technology that enables data transmission over copper telephone lines by using frequencies that are not used by a voice telephone call

AES128: Advanced Encryption Standard

one option for the Encryption used by SNMPv3, using a 128-bit key length
Related term: DES

ANSI: American National Standards Institute

an organisation which defines various standards; those standards are referred to as ANSI-standard formats

AP: (Wireless) Access Point

See: WAP

API: Application Programming Interface

a set of clearly defined methods of communication between various software components. Read more about the Highlight API.

ASA: Adaptive Security Appliance

A Cisco firewall and network security platform

ATM: Asynchronous Transfer Mode

data is transmitted in cells of a small, fixed size

AVC: Application Visibility and Control

a Cisco feature to maximise application performance on a network

Bandwidth

data transfer rate (speed) of a network link, usually measured in bits per second (bps) or multiples:

• Gbps/Gbs: gigabits per second, Highlight expresses this as 1000 megabits per second
• Mbps/Mbs: megabits per second, Highlight expresses this as 1000 kilobits per second
• kbps/kbs: kilobits per second, Highlight expresses this as 1000 bits per second

Burst

a relatively high amount of data sent or received over a short period

Cache

website information stored on your computer so web pages will load faster

Cacheable Content

static information (on a web page) that does not change very often as opposed to non-cacheable content - dynamic information that changes regularly or for each user request and serves no purpose if it were cached

CBQOS: Class Based Quality of Service

a Cisco feature
Related terms: CoS, QoS

CE: Customer Edge (Router)

a router at the customer premises that is connected to the service provider MPLS network
Related terms: PE, MPLS

Channel utilisation (wireless)

Channel Utilisation indicates the percentage of time that a wireless access point (WAP) considers a channel to be busy with both user traffic and generic broadcast wireless traffic

Cisco

Cisco Systems, based in California, produces networking equipment

Class

a category of network traffic, used as part of a policy; example: Real_Time (used for voice and video so highest priority)

Client

software on a computer that relies on sending a request to a computer server as part of the application

Codec

a device or program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream

Conversation

two devices communicating, used in Flow
Related term: Flow

Cookie

small piece of information stored on your computer by your browser to customise what you see on a web page

CoS: Class of Service

the facility in an Ethernet packet to mark a priority from 0-7 which may be used by QoS to determine how traffic should be treated
Related terms: CBQOS, QoS

CPE: Customer Premises Equipment

typically the router or edge device connecting to a Service Provider network

CPU: Central Processing Unit

the “brains” of a computer or other networking device, also called the processor

CRC: Cyclic Redundancy Check

an error-detecting code commonly used in digital networks to detect any changes in received data

CSV: Comma Separated Values

a tabular file format whereby each line represents a file record, and the fields associated with that record are separated by a comma
Related terms: DOCX, RTF

Datagram

Another term for a packet in IP networks, contains a segment of data and the destination address, enables data to be sent in small sections and reassembled at the destination
Related term: IP

Delay

related to the processing and queuing times of a device, and also the effect of packet loss on an application requiring retransmissions

DES: Data Encryption Standard

a widely-used method of data encryption using a 56-bit key length. 3-DES (triple DES) applies the encyption three times for each data block and is Highlight's default option for SNMPv3 encryption.
Related term: AES128

DNS: Domain Name System

translates domain names into numerical IP addresses - the Internet's primary directory service

DOCX: Document Format

a document/XML file format which allows graphics, column re-sizing and custom logos to be inserted in downloaded Highlight reports and is not generally used for further analysis or data manipulation
Related terms: CSV, RTF

DPI: Deep Packet Inspection

an advanced method of packet filtering which makes it possible to locate, identify, classify, reroute or block packets with specific data that normal packet filtering (which examines only packet headers) cannot detect, DPI is useful when identifying port hopping applications such as Skype

DSCP: Differentiated Services Code Point

a field in an IP packet that enables different levels of service to be assigned to network traffic - achieved by marking each packet on the network with a DSCP code and appropriating to it the corresponding level of service
Related term: IP

DSL: Digital Subscriber Line

a family of technologies that are used to provide data network access by transmitting digital data over telephone lines

Echo

a single packet exchange between two devices typically used to establish round trip time

Egress

the outbound direction on a device interface
Related term: ingress

Encryption

converting data into a form that can be transmitted without others being able to read the data; data is decrypted (using a password or key) by the receiving device

Ethernet

a family of computer networking technologies mainly used for local area networks
Related term: LAN

Flow

a sequence of packets from a source computer to a destination. Highlight Flow reports on the top 20 flows by volume for a given time period, using IP address and port numbers

• IPFIX: IP Flow Information Export - an industry standard for sending Flow information
• NetFlow: Cisco version of Flow
• J-Flow: Juniper proprietary version of Flow using packet sampling

FQDN: Fully Qualified Domain Name

the unique combination of a hostname and a parent domain name e.g. www.highlight.net is the FQDN, where www is the host and highlight.net is the domain name

Frame

a block of data that is transmitted across a datalink such as Ethernet
Related term: Ethernet

Gateway

a device to interconnect networks that use different protocols e.g. an IP network to a public telephone network
Related term: IP

GUI: Graphical User Interface

the part of software with which the user interacts – buttons, menus, toolbars, etc. Also UI: User Interface

HMAC: Hash-based Message Authentication Code

uses a cryptographic key (like a password) with a hash function to provide data integrity and authentication. (hashing turns a string of characters into a shorter fixed-length value or key that represents the original string)

HRM: Host Resources MIB

part of the SNMP MIB tree, headed by OID .1.3.6.1.2.1.25
Related terms: SNMP, MIB, OID

HSRP: Hot Standby Router Protocol

a Cisco protocol that provides default gateway redundancy in the event of failure

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language

a standard used to create web pages adding graphic and hyperlink effects and involving tagging of text indicate font and colour

HTTP/S: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (Secure)

the set of rules for transferring data over the Internet; entering a URL into a browser sends an HTTP request to the appropriate Web server which in turn sends the requested HTML page
Related terms: URL, HTML

Hybrid WAN

a wide-area network which is built from a combination of two Internet Protocol technologies, usually a private MPLS network, and an IPsec VPN running over the public Internet
Related terms: WAN, IWAN, MPLS, VPN, IP

ICMP: Internet Control Message Protocol

a standard set of rules used by IP for message control and error reporting

Ingress

the inbound direction on a device interface
Related term: egress

Interface

a physical or virtual network connection point on a device, generally defined by a name and network address, plus hardware address (if physical)

IOS: Internetwork Operating System

operating software running on Cisco equipment
Related term: Cisco

IP: Internet Protocol

the method by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet

IP address

a numerical reference used to address a device on a network such as 136.129.4.108
Related term: IP

IPSLA: IP Service Level Agreement

a Cisco application which enables a router to measure metrics such as round-trip delays and unanswered echo requests
Related terms: Cisco, RPM

ISP: Internet Service Provider

an organisation that provides access to or through the Internet and may also provide other network services such as domain name registration

IWAN: Intelligent Wide Area Network

a Cisco router feature typically found in Hybrid WAN environments. IWAN routers make intelligent routing decisions by weighing jitter, loss and delay measurements against application requirements like priority or delay sensitivity
Related terms: WAN, SD-WAN, Hybrid WAN

Jitter

variation in the time between packets arriving, caused by network congestion, timing drift, or route changes (important in digital voice transmission and other real-time applications)

Juniper

Juniper Networks, based in California, produces networking equipment

LACP: Link Aggregation Control Protocol

A protocol for the bundling multiple physical ports that can be then be treated as a single channel for network traffic purposes.

LAN: Local Area Network

a computer network that interconnects devices within a limited area such as an office block, using standards such as Ethernet and WiFi, typically the boundary (domain) of a network broadcast
Related term: Ethernet

Latency

a measure of the round trip time to send a packet and confirm its receipt

Load

a measure of traffic compared with the connection speed

MAC address: Media Access Control address

a unique identifier usually assigned by the hardware vendor to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. This is unlike an IP address, which is assigned using policy set by the administrator of the network a device is connected to.

MD5: Message Digest algorithm 5

the default option for the Authentication Protocol for SNMPv3
Related term: SHA1

MIB: Management Information Base

a formal description of a set of network objects that can be managed using SNMP
Related term: SNMP

MOS: Mean Opinion Score

a measure of the perceived audio quality of a telephone connection, scored from 1.0 (poor) to 5.0 (excellent) influenced by delay, loss and jitter
Related terms: delay, loss, jitter

MPLS: Multi-Protocol Label Switching

a system in telecommunications networks that passes data from one network node to the next based on short path labels avoiding complex lookups in a routing table

NAT: Network Address Translation

The process of mapping a source or destination IP address in a packet to another IP address
Related term: IP address

NBAR: Network-Based Application Recognition

mechanism used by Cisco devices to recognise applications, packets are inspected using DPI
Related terms: Cisco, DPI

NDA: Non-Disclosure Agreement

a contract between two parties that permits confidential access to a set of information

NIC: Network Interface Card

A circuit board installed in a computer to provide network connectivity

NTP: Network Time Protocol

A method to provide clock (time) synchronisation between computer systems over data networks

Octet

consists of eight bits of digital information and is broadly equivalent to a byte

OID: Object Identifier

used in SNMP to reference a setting using a numerical tree structure
Related term: SNMP

Packet

also called a datagram in IP networks, contains a segment of data and the destination address, enables data to be sent in small sections and reassembled at the destination
Related term: IP

Packet loss

the failure of one or more transmitted packets to arrive at their destination
Related term: packet

Packet discard/Discarded packet

can be the result of network queues becoming full, or packets which arrive but too late for processing, or duplicate packets
Related term: packet

PAgP: Port Aggregation Protocol

this is another term for LACP

PE: Provider Edge (Router)

a router on a service provider MPLS network that is connected to other provider networks or a customer edge router
Related terms: CE, MPLS

Ping: Packet INternet Groper

A simple network echo packet

PoE: Power over Ethernet

a system for passing electrical power over Ethernet cabling to a connected device with no other power source

Police

a process for limiting the throughput of traffic

Policy

a series of actions that you want applied to traffic sent or received, using classes (class-maps) to categorise the traffic of interest

QA: Quality Assurance (Testing)

a way of preventing mistakes or defects in products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers

QoS: Quality of Service

the ability in a network to provide different priority, or to guarantee a certain level of performance, to different applications [Simplistic Analogy: a main road with tolls, both barrier and without. Traffic through the non-barrier channel is unrestricted whereas the barriered channels can limit traffic according to road conditions ahead.]

Router or CPE: Customer Premises Equipment

typically connected to at least two networks and decides which way to send each packet based on its learned or configured understanding of the whole network

Routing Table

a set of rules that is used to determine the next hop for data packets traveling over a network

RPM: Real-time Performance Monitoring

a Juniper service similar to Cisco IPSLA
Related term: IPSLA

RSSI: Received Signal Strength Indicator

for cellular connections, a measurement of the power present in a received radio signal. Range is -30 to -120 dBm. Readings closer to zero are a stronger signal.
Related terms: RSRP

RSRP: Reference Signal Received Power

for cellular connections, a measure of signal level and quality for modern 4G and 5G networks. RSRP is a more precise and accurate metric than RSSI. Range is -44 to -140 dBm. Readings closer to zero are a stronger signal.
Related terms: RSSI

RTF: Rich Text Format

a document file format which has formatting applied and is not generally used for further analysis or data manipulation
Related terms: CSV, DOCX

RTT: Round Trip Time

the overall time for a ping or echo to reach a device and receive a response, helpful to determine if there are any delay or latency problems on the network
Related terms: ping, echo

SaaS: Software as a Service

a way of delivering centrally hosted service applications, typically over the Internet

SD-WAN: Software-defined Wide Area Network

a network using centralised control of application routing to improve user experience
Related term: WAN

Server

typically a more powerful computer with greater storage capability which runs applications accessed from client computers
Related term: client

SHA1: Secure Hash Algorithm-1

one option for the Authentication Protocol for SNMPv3
Related term: MD5

Shaping

a traffic management technique which can queue traffic to comply with a desired traffic profile, used to optimise link performance by prioritising some traffic types

SLA: Service Level Agreement

terms agreed between companies on what will be delivered, typically on service availability or performance

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

an Internet standard for email transmission

SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol

a standard method for managing devices on IP networks, using storage that can be that can be read and/or written to by the management system; there are three versions with improving security features: V1, V2c and V3
Related terms: IP, SNMP trap

SNMPv3 terms

• DES - Data Encryption Algorithm encryption protocol
• AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard encryption protocol
• SHA1 - Secure Hash Algorithm-1 authentication protocol
• MD5 - Message Digest algorithm 5 authentication protocol

SNMP Trap

an unsolicited message to a server (trap receiver) usually indicating a significant event has occurred Note: Highlight does not operate as a trap receiver
Related term: SNMP

SNR: Signal to Noise Ratio

Signal-to-noise ratio is a measure that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in decibels.

SSID: Service Set Identifier

The name given to a wireless network. A 32 character unique identifier for the WLAN. Usually this is also the name of the network which is visible to those who connect to it.
Related term: WLAN

TCP: Transmission Control Protocol

an IP protocol used at the transport layer which provides reliable transmission and adapts to network changes such as congestion.
Related term: IP

TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

the standardised set of communication protocols used over the Internet.
Related term: IP

Time Measurements

millisecond (=1/1000 second, msec or ms), microsecond (=1/1000000 second, µsec/µs)

ToS: Type of Service

the facility in an IP packet to differentiate services carried, used by QoS schemes
Related terms: CoS, QoS

Traffic

data being carried by the network or through a particular interface

Tunnel

a virtual link which provides a network service not supported by the carrying network e.g. the ability to carry non-IP traffic over an IP network
Related terms: IP

UDP: User Datagram Protocol

an IP protocol used at the transport layer which provides simple transmission with no delivery guarantee

URL: Uniform Resource Locator

the address of a specific website or file on the Internet which uses forward slashes for different directories and does not contain spaces nor certain other characters

UTC: Universal Time Coordinated or Coordinated Universal Time

the time standard commonly used across the world, usually the same time as GMT

VLAN: Virtual Local Area Network

a LAN that is partitioned into separate broadcast domains is then comprised of multiple virtual LANs
Related term: LAN

VM: Virtual Machine

has its own operating system but shares resources, running under a control system which allocates resources and offers power and console management

VoIP: Voice over IP

a group of technologies to provide voice services over IP
Related term: IP

Volume

data held on a server or transferred across a network link, usually measured in bytes (B) or multiples:

• TB: terabyte, Highlight expresses this as 1024 gigabytes
• GB: gigabytes, Highlight expresses this as 1024 megabytes
• MB: megabytes, Highlight expresses this as 1024 kilobytes
• kB: kilobytes, Highlight expresses this as 1024 bytes

VPN: Virtual Private Network

encrypts the original source and destination addressing as well as the application data before passing it across a public network (to create a network that appears private)
Related term: encryption

VRF: Virtual Routing and Forwarding

included in IP network routers and allows multiple instances of a routing table to exist in a router and work simultaneously. With VRF, network paths can be segmented without using multiple devices which increases network security and can eliminate the need for encryption and authentication. ISPs often take advantage of VRF to create separate virtual private networks (VPNs) for customers; thus the technology is also referred to as VPN routing and forwarding.
Related terms: routing table, VPN, ISP, IP

WAN: Wide Area Network

typically a telecommunications network that links LANs across a wide geographical area
Related term: LAN

WAP: Wireless Access Point

Often referred to as an Access Point, a device that transmits and receives wireless signals. A WAP acts as the first layer of control for devices connecting to a common WLAN and allows for communication between WLANs and wired LANs.
Related terms: AP, LAN, WLAN

Webhook

A way for an App to provide real-time information to other applications.
Highlight has an option to pass alert information to service management systems utilising webhook technology.

Wireless Controller

WAPs connect to this device and it acts a centralised location for co-ordinating and controlling large numbers of WAPs and Wireless devices. It maintains a central configuration, security policy and software image for a group of WAPs. Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) is used by Cisco, Wireless Network Controller (WNC) by Aruba.
Related term: WAP

WLAN: Wireless LAN

Wireless Local Area Network, a network made up of stations and access points used to connect devices without the use of wires. For the purposes of this glossary it refers to wireless networks using the IEEE 802.11 protocol
Related terms: LAN, 802.11

WLC/WNC: Wireless LAN Controller/Wireless Network Controller

WLC is used by Cisco, WNC by Aruba.
Related term: Wireless Controller