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Network Performance and Health

The Energy Manager provides visibility into the performance and health of the network infrastructure to help identify opportunities to improve network performance.

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Monitoring Network Performance and Health

Manage provides visibility into the network infrastructure's performance and health to help identify opportunities to improve network performance. Refer to the following articles for detailed procedures:

Network Performance Throughput Test

Network performance measures the maximum throughput that your network can support with a Packet Error Rate (PER). Manage schedules Bluetooth sensors to send test packets at a particular rate and measures the number of packets received to calculate the PER. A Throughput Test varies the packet send rate until it finds the highest rate with an acceptable PER. This rate is the throughput of the network. During the test, it is likely that location data will be negatively affected.

The tests allow network professionals to determine the ability of the network to support applications and make improvements. The test results provide professionals with information to reconfigure the network, add new gateways, add hoppers, and change gateway channels to resolve problems and improve the network.

Network Health

Network health continuously monitors the network to measure connectivity based on messages that Manage continuously sends and receives. Unlike network performance, network health is continuously assessed without impacting the network.

Scheduling a Network Throughput Test

Manage provides visibility into the network infrastructure's performance and health to help identify opportunities to improve network performance. The network performance measures the maximum throughput that your network can support with a Packet Error Rate (PER).

Scheduling a Network Throughput Test

You can schedule a throughput test at any facility level of a campus for one or more buildings or floors at a time. Manage maintains a queue of all scheduled tests. You can view the list of tests and cancel a test before it is scheduled to start. The View Facility button displays the buildings and floors the tests were assigned.

When scheduled tests are run, there may be a few seconds when switches will not turn on or off lights, and some motion groups will not be activated. These impacts on lighting should be rare and short in duration. On the other hand, it may be common for location data to be impacted during a throughput test.

To schedule a throughput test,

Step 1: Navigate to Administration>Diagnostics.

Step 2: Click Throughput Test Schedule and Status.

Step 3: Click Schedule in the top right.

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Step 4: In the Schedule Throughput Test window, the test name is populated, but you can edit it.

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Step 5: Insert the cursor in the Test Start Time field, and select a date and time from the calendar.

Step 6: Click Done to close the calendar.

Step 7: Click Select Facility and select one or more floors to schedule this test in the Facility Assignment window and click Save. Note: It is not possible to schedule future tests by Areas or specific sensors.

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Step 8: In the Schedule Throughput Test window, click Schedule. The test is displayed in the list of scheduled tests. The test is then run at the scheduled time.

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Running Network Throughput On-demand Test

Manage provides visibility into the network infrastructure's performance and health to help identify opportunities to improve network performance. The network performance measures the maximum throughput that your network can support with a Packet Error Rate (PER).

To run an on-demand network throughput test,

  1. Select a floor from the Facility Left Panel and click the Floor Plan tab. 
  2. Select Network from the View drop-down. A couple of network-related drop-down lists appear next to the Network drop-down list.
  3. In the Diagnostics drop-down, select Throughput Test.
  4. Zoom the floor plan and select one or more sensors or gateways on the floor display. Selecting a gateway will run the test for all sensors on that gateway.
  5. Right-click and select Run Throughput Test Now in the pop-up.

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  1. The system automatically provides the Test Name in the Run Throughput Test Now window. If required, you can edit the name. Click Run Test Now.

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The on-demand throughput test will be in progress for the duration displayed in the window. After that duration, refresh the floor plan window to see the results.

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View Throughput Results in Floor Plan

After you schedule or run an on-demand throughput test, you can view the throughput results in a table format. 

To view throughput results,

  1. Select a floor from the Facility left panel.
  2. Click the Floor Plan tab.
  3. Select Network in the View drop-down. A couple of network-related drop-down lists appear next to the Network drop-down list.
  4. In the Diagnostics drop-down, select Throughput Test.
  5. Select the test name from the Test drop-down list. The Test name refers to the test name automatically provided by the system while running the throughput test.

All sensors connected to a Gateway (GW) will have the same color. Darker shades indicate a lower Packet Error Rate (PER), representing a strong network connection compared to lighter color shades with a higher PER. The legend to the right identifies the PER. Hovering over a sensor brings up the sensor details with the PER.

For detailed insights, filter the results by PER or Gateway. By monitoring the metrics at a glance, you can determine how effectively the sensors communicate with the Gateway to learn what is working and not working and accordingly make decisions when assigning sensors to Gateways.

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Viewing Throughput Test Results in Table Format

After you schedule or run an on-demand throughput test in Manage, you can view the Viewing Throughput Results in Floor Plan or table format. To view throughput test results in a table format,

Step 1: Navigate to Administration > Diagnostics.

Step 2: Click the Throughput Test Results tab in the Diagnostics window.

Step 3: Select a Test from the drop-down list of tests to view the summarized results. Most tests will contain multiple phases of different packet send rates. The Test name refers to the test name automatically provided by the system while running the throughput test.

Manage assesses the Packet Error Rate (PER) results of the initial phase. If unacceptable, it decreases the send rate. If the PER is acceptable, it increases the send rate. Manage attempts to find the highest rate with an Acceptable PER. The Result column shows whether each phase was Unacceptable, Acceptable, or Best Acceptable.

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The following results are displayed:

  • Packets Send Rate per Sensor – Number of packets sent per minute by each sensor.
  • Percentage of Sensors That Failed to Start Test – Of all the sensors scheduled to be in the test, the percentage that did not confirm receiving the test command or failed to get any packets to Manage.
  • Aggregate Packet Send Rate – Total number of packets sent per second.
  • Aggregate Throughput – Total number of packets received per second.
  • Aggregate Packet Error Rate (PER) – Total number of packets sent minus the total number of packets received, divided by the total number of packets sent.
  • Result – Acceptable: PER at the phase’s Packet Send Rate per Sensor is acceptable.
  • Unacceptable: PER at the phase’s Packet Send Rate per Sensor is not acceptable.
  • Best Acceptable: The highest Packet Send Rate per Sensor at which the PER is acceptable. This phase indicates the Aggregate Throughput of the sensors in your test.
  • Max. GW PER – The gateway with the maximum PER of all GWs included in the test.
  • Min GW PER – The gateway with the minimum PER of all GWs included in the test.
  • Median GW PER – Half of the gateways in the test had a higher PER, and half of the gateways in the test had a lower PER.
  • Max Sensor PER – The sensor with the maximum PER of all sensors included in the test.
  • Min Sensor PER – The sensor with the minimum PER of all sensors included in the test.
  • Median Sensor PER – Half of the sensors in the test had a higher PER, and half of the sensors in the test had a lower PER.

In addition to showing a Test Summary, the test results are displayed for each sensor and aggregated for each gateway. To view results by a gateway, click the By Gateway tab. The gateways displayed are filtered by the selected facility in the facility tree. You can filter the results by Test Name, Packet Send Rate, and Gateway.

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To view results by a sensor, click By Sensor. The sensors displayed are filtered by the selected facility in the facility tree. You can filter the results by Test Name, Packet Send Rate, Gateway, and Sensor.

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Automatic Recovery of Lost Sensors

The Automatic recovery mechanism runs every day at 2:00 am to recover unreachable commissioned sensors and recommissions them by sending the configured wireless settings to these sensors.

Every day at 2 AM, Manage attempts to recover sensors that have not communicated for the past 12 hours. This could be sensors that have been decommissioned, powered off, or otherwise unreachable. For each lost sensor, Manage will attempt recovery daily for three days and then stop attempting. 

When Manage attempts to recover a sensor, sensors that share the same Gateway will not respond to Manage commands for a short period of time (always less than five minutes).

Below is a list of the events generated for the automatic recovery of lost sensors when Manage attempts to recover sensors that have not communicated for the past 12 hours.

    1. Attempting to find and recover sensors that lost communication: This event is sent at the beginning of the sensor recommission operation for a gateway.
    2. xx:yy:zz sensor could not be recovered:  xx:yy:zz is the sensor's MAC address that failed to acknowledge recommissioning.
    3. Attempt to recover lost sensors is complete. Discovered ‘NN’ number of sensors that failed to communicate. Recovered ‘NN’ number of sensors.
    4. Recommissioning failed: Gateway did not move to the default channel. This is an alarm with the severity of ‘Major’ as this is a serious network condition warning.

Event notifications are shown in the Events tab.

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You can configure to receive an email notification for Auto Recovering Lost Sensors. Refer to Configuring Email Notifications.

By default, Manage attempts to recover lost sensors that have not communicated for the past 12 hours. To change the duration or turn off the Automatic recovery of lost sensors feature in Manage, contact Enlighted Support. 

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