What is State, Quality, Performance and Statistics
In the previous chapters, you could learn how the program detects the host state, the connection quality, and the host performance and how to use different views of the program to assess the required characteristics. In this chapter, you can learn what features of the program you can use in different cases and how to interpret the reported data.
You can use Ping Monitor for the following tasks:
- Track real-time changes. Host state and connection quality monitoring deals with the current real-time status of the monitored host.
- Analyze statistics for a historical period. Host statistics and host performance deal with historical information for a specific time range.
Tracking the real-time status and detecting its changes are the main features of monitoring systems. Ping Monitor allows you to track the host state and the connection quality. At the same time, Ping Monitor can be used as an analytical tool that collects statistics and allows auditing collected data for any historical period.
To decide what feature of the program you should use, you need to understand first whether you have to work with real-time or historical data. The host state and quality indicate the real-time status of the monitored host, whereas host statistics and host performance operate with historical data for a specific time range.
Below you can find a brief explanation of the main concepts of the program.
State
The host state is a real-time characteristic of a host used to determine if the host is reachable or not. If the host is Up, it means that it works and replies to ping requests. If the host is Down, it means that the host doesn’t reply to ping requests, so it is unreachable. The program monitors the states of all the hosts in real-time and displays the states on the State Summary page. The program can send you notifications when the host states change. Learn more about the host states in the Monitoring Host State chapter.
Quality
The connection quality is a real-time characteristic of the host used to estimate the quality of the connection between the monitoring server and the monitored host. When a host is Up, the connection quality allows you to assess how good the connection to the host is, using various real-time metrics. When the host is Up, the quality can be Good, Warning or Bad depending on its metrics. When the host is Down, the quality is Critical, which means the host is unreachable. The host quality is measured based on real-time metrics such as the packet loss percentage, latency percentile and jitter. The program detects real-time changes in the connection quality to send notifications and display the current status on the Quality Summary page. Learn more about the connection quality in the Monitoring Connection Quality chapter.
Which one do you need to track: the state or the quality? It depends on your goal. If you want to know whether a host is Up or Down, you should monitor the host state. In other cases, it makes sense to monitor the connection quality because that would give you more detailed information and enable you to resolve problems proactively before they are escalated to the next level. For example, you can start resolving the problem when the quality becomes Warning, whereas the monitored host is still reachable.
Statistics
The host statistics is a set of collected ping results and aggregate data for a historical period. Having this information available, the program allows analyzing the host performance during any historical time interval. For example, you can analyze the host statistics during the last week, look into the daily performance of this host day by day and find time intervals during which problems occurred.
Performance
The host performance is a characteristic that allows you to assess how the host worked during the selected historical period. The host performance can be High, Medium, Low and Faulty. The host performance is evaluated using different statistical metrics calculated for the selected period. These metrics are the uptime percentage, packet loss percentage, average latency, latency deviation, CV (latency coefficient of variation) and MOS (mean opinion score). Learn more about the host statistics and performance in the Analyzing Host Statistics chapter.
What is the difference between the host quality and the host performance? The host quality is a real-time characteristic calculated using the current ping results. The host performance is a historical characteristic calculated for a selected historical period. Therefore, if you need to assess the real-time status of a host to understand how it works right now, you should use host quality. If you need to estimate the host characteristics for yesterday, for example, you should use the host performance.