In our first post of the quarterly feature update, we discussed recent improvements to the Dashboard, APIs and more. In this post, let’s recap some of our recent feature announcements and review what’s new in the six releases from May to July 2017.
The Sight of Sound
Following a successful beta testing with leading UCaaS providers like Mitel and customers like Box, the new SIP Server and Voice Call tests are now generally available for all ThousandEyes customers. The new additions enhance our voice test capability and provide end-to-end visibility into a VoIP call from SIP signaling to the RTP voice stream. The new Voice tests allow customers to verify functionality and performance of their voice infrastructure, both on their local network and in the cloud.
The SIP Server test performs either a "SIP OPTIONS" test or (optionally) performs registration with the target SIP server. The Voice Call test combines the functionality of the SIP Server and RTP Stream tests to simulate a full voice call between two ThousandEyes Agents. As with other ThousandEyes tests, the new Voice tests also provide a Network View for troubleshooting issues below the application layer.
Documentation on Voice test configuration and metrics is available in the ThousandEyes Knowledge Base. See the links to documentation below.
Configuration:
Test Metrics:
Groups Become Labels
We've revamped our Groups interface for grouping ThousandEyes Agents and Tests, which will now be called Labels. The drag-and-drop configuration has been replaced with a new interface that is consistent with the look and feel of the rest of the app, and also simplifies the configuration and management of multiple agents or multiple tests. Access to the Labels from the Tests page or Enterprise Agents page is unchanged, beyond renaming "Groups" to "Labels". Stay tuned in the coming months as we extend Labels to additional objects.
Cloud Agents
Continuing our efforts to enhance our IPv6 fleet, we've added seven locations to the set of IPv6 Cloud Agents:
- Dusseldorf, Germany
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Munich, Germany
- Maidstone, UK
- Manchester, UK
- Perth, Australia
- Singapore (2)
We've added a new IPv4 Cloud Agent location in Hong Kong as well. Since this is the second site in Hong Kong, we've changed the name of the existing Hong Kong Cloud Agent to "San Po Kong, Hong Kong" and added the second Cloud Agent location, "Wan Chai, Hong Kong".
Enterprise Agent Utilization and Test Management
High utilization of Enterprise Agents and test management have been regular topics in our support cases. We’ve made a few enhancements based on user feedback to manage enterprise agent utilization and cross-account group tests more efficiently. Previously, we reported utilization of the cluster members, rather than of the cluster itself. We've now switched: utilization of clusters is now reported under a new Cluster Statistics tab, and the individual Agents no longer display the Agent Statistics tab, if they are part of a cluster.
We've also added a utility to manage tests assigned to Enterprise Agents and Enterprise Agent clusters. A new Manage link is available on the Agent Utilization graph under the Agent Statistics tab (individual Enterprise Agents) or on the Cluster Utilization graph under the Cluster Statistics tab (Enterprise Agent clusters). Clicking the link will display a list of the test queues for which the Agent has at least one test assigned.
An Enterprise Agent will have utilization graphs for these four queues:
- Browser Tests
- General Tests
- Bandwidth and Throughput Tests
- Voice Tests
Counting down to API v6
We have begun the 90-day countdown for the default version change of our API. On September 13th, 2017, the default version of the API will be changed from version 5 to version 6. At that time, API queries specified against the non-versioned API will query based on the newer version, and the oldest version of the API (version 4) will move into a sunset phase of 90 days.
We have added quite a few key enhancements to API v6, including access to Endpoint agent metrics, exporting reports through API and OAuth authentication support for queries.
As always, our feature roadmap and product development are driven by feedback from you. Please reach out to us through your account team or the wish page if you have any feedback or feature requests.
