Create Task

To create a new Synthetic Monitoring task, please follow the steps below.

1. Click Synthetic Tasks in the upper menu bar to enter the Task Maintenance page.

2. Click the Create Task button in the upper right corner to enter the task settings page.

3. Configure Basic Info.

4. Configure Required Parameters.

5. Configure Monitoring Period.

6. Configure Probe Scope.

7. (Optional) Configure Advanced Parameters.

8. Click the Save button and complete task settings. Click the Enter alert settings after saving button to continue configuring alerts.

Basic Info

Basic Info includes: network type, Task Type, creation method. For an introduction to network type and Task Type, please see. There are three types of creation method, namely Manual Creation, Batch Creation, and Batch Import.

• Manual Creation: Create a single Task.

• Batch Creation: Multiple tasks can be created. Click Add in Required Parameters to add tasks.

• Batch Import: First download the task template file, fill in the task settings file according to the template format, and then upload the task settings file.

Required Parameters

• Package: Task Type that can be configured. Each Task Type will have a default package. package is part of the monitoring service Contract and manages monitoring tasks with the same attributes. The monitoring task is associated with the package and is constrained by the package in the settings of some key attributes.

• Task name: used for identifying the monitoring task in the report. Special characters are not allowed in the name. It is recommended to choose a name that is easy to remember.

• URL: Domain or IP address that needs to be monitored by the monitoring task. Make sure it can be accessed through the Browser. Click Verify to test whether the entered Domain or IP address can be accessed normally.

• Bind Task: Check the New Bind Task checkbox and enter the Bind name. In this way, multiple tasks can be bound. The system will deliver multiple bound tasks to the same Probe at the same time, which facilitates comparison of multiple tasks.

• Browser Options: refers to the Browser type of the monitoring client. (Add support for edgeBrowser)

• Industry: used for contrast IndustryMetric. When you do not need to compare IndustryMetric, you can select None.

• Stream Type (Streaming Media Monitoring): including Streaming Media File, Streaming Media Page, Load via Script.

• Streaming Media Protocol (Streaming Media Monitoring): VLC, Flash, etc.

• uvmos: IDentifies whether it is Huawei's U-vMOS video surveillance, defaultclosure is enough.

• Video Quality(Streaming Media Monitoring): SD, UHD, HD.

• Signature Match (Streaming Media Monitoring): used for matching signatures.

• Bytes Match (Streaming Media Monitoring): used for matching Byte number.

Monitoring Period

Monitoring Period refers to the time period and Monitoring Frequency for monitoring the Task. Monitoring Period has two modes, Time range and Date Mode.

• Time range: Validity Period of configuring the task. After this date, the monitoring of the task will stop. User can direct settings in the first date component, or quickly select a fixed time in the second drop-down menu. The date in the date component will change accordingly. When Package validity period is selected, the Validity Period will display the End Time of the Package purchased in the Contract.

• Date Mode: Click the Time range at the rear to set the Start Time and End Time of the configuring the task.

• Monitoring Frequency: refers to the time interval required for Specify's monitoring Task, after a certain monitoring client completes the Monitoring task once and then execute the Monitoring task next time. The shortest can be set to 1 minute and the longest can be set to 24 hours. When Do Not Execute is selected, the task will not be executed again after it is executed once.

• Custom execution plan: When fixed Frequency cannot meet monitoring needs, configuring a custom monitoring plan can be used. Supports different Monitoring Frequencies for different times and different date settings. The Custom monitoring plan has a higher priority than the default monitoring Frequency. The unset time segment in the plan is executed according to the default monitoring Frequency.

Probe Scope

Probe scope is used to configure Probes that execute Task, usually settings in the form of Probe Group. Each Probe Group can include Probes under different City-ISP-connection method combinations. For how to Create Probe Group, see New Probe Group.

Advanced Parameters

Different types of tasks can have different Advanced Parameters in settings. Please make settings according to the actual situation on the product page.

End Condition

• task Timeout: It is the timeout of the entire monitoring Task, expressed in seconds as Unit. If Probes performs monitoring once and the task is not completed within the set timeout, the current monitoring of the task will be terminated. The Error code of return timeout and task Timeout default are 120 seconds.

• Extra Wait Time: The time to wait for Latency to load content (for example: Flash, streaming media data...) after the page is fully loaded. The Default value is 0, which means no waiting.

• Client Redirect Count: If page content includes Meta Refresh or JavaScript redirection, please be sure to set this item correctly, otherwise the data download may be incomplete.

  Redirection technology can be divided into two categories, one is client redirection and the other is server-side redirection. Client redirection can be achieved through settings-specific HTTP headers, or by writing JavaScript. In a Specify monitoring task, if the monitoring task includes server redirection, you do not need to set any attributes, and the monitoring client can be processed automatically. However, if the monitoring task includes client redirection, you must Setup this option. When the set value is less than the Client Redirect Count in the monitoring task, the data download will be incomplete.

• Monitoring Duration (only supported by Streaming Media Monitoring task): It is the Monitoring Time of the entire Streaming Media Monitoring task, expressed in seconds as Unit. For streaming media in HTTP FLV format, during the monitoring process, the monitoring terminal will first check the video time of the streaming media. For example, the video time of a 20M FLV file is 10Minute (600 seconds). Then, the monitoring terminal will end monitoring after downloading one-tenth of the video, 2M (20M*60/600) data. If the network speed is relatively fast, the actual Monitoring Time may be less than 60 seconds. If the network speed is relatively slow and the Monitoring Time has reached 60 seconds before downloading the 2M data, then the monitoring end will also end monitoring.

• Page Timeout (only supported by Streaming Media Monitoring task): the timeout to wait for the streaming media in the page to be loaded. If the streaming media is not found within this timeout, a "streaming media not found" error will be triggered. Page Timeout has no effect when directly configuring a streaming media file as URL.

Profiling

These attributes are generally used for when a monitoring task of a certain monitoring client is executed and an error occurs. In order to understand the network situation of the monitoring client at that time, the monitoring client performs Ping, TraceRoute, Nslookup, Screenshot, upload HTML source code, retains the action of the HTTP header, and returns the results together with the error monitoring.

1. Ping

• Execute when page error occurs: Execute only when Page Error occurs.

• Always Execute, execute under any circumstances.

• Ping packet size: refers to the size of the Ping packet sent each time, default 32 Byte.

• Ping count: Specify Ping task points, the default is 4 times.

• When executing Ping task, if the ICMP packet cannot be sent normally, it will be decided according tothe settings whether to use TCP Ping. If the check box is checked, it will be used. When the TCP connection is Reset (TCP Ping), check the lower-level check box and the ping is deemed to have arrived.

2. Nslookup: A command line tool that monitors whether the DNS server can correctly implement Domain resolution. You can choose whether to use it and when to use it.

3. Trace Route: Choose whether to use it and when to use it.

4. Screenshot options: normal screenshot and Dynamic Screenshot (You can only choose one of normal screenshot and Dynamic Screenshot):

Single Page Screenshot

• Execute when page error occurs.

• Execute when page error or content error occurs.

• Always Execute, execute under any circumstances.

Dynamic Screenshot

• Dynamic Screenshot supports execution when a page error occurs, Page Error or content error occurs, and Always Execute

• The Frequency of Dynamic Screenshot is determined according to the value range of LCP

• DOM content loading is complete (domcontentloaded) starts taking screenshots

• 0-2.5 seconds: Screenshot is executed every 200Milliseconds

• 2.5-4.0 seconds: Screenshot is executed every 300Milliseconds

• 4.0 seconds Above: Screenshot is executed every 3000Milliseconds

• 120 seconds Above: Screenshot is executed every 5000Milliseconds

5. upload HTML source code: When an error occurs in the Task, the HTML source code can be uploaded. The upload methods are divided into three modes: upload when an error occurs, always upload, and upload when an error or content error occurs.

6. Preserve HTTP headers: If you enable the preservation of HTTP headers, you can see the HTTPSRequest header information and HTTP response header information in the waterfall chart of the element. There are three types of Status for retaining HTTP headers: retaining only main elements and error elements, retaining All main elements and response headers, and retaining All elements, Request headers and response headers.

7. Packet Capture: Indicates that the task packet capture can be performed. packet capture content can be viewed after downloading.

Probe Filter

• Check Probe DNS settings: Indicates whether the task can be distributed to Probes with incorrect DNS settings. When this option is checked, only Probes whose IP addresses match the Province or ISP of the primary DNS are selected. Probes may have DNS settings that do not match the ISP where they are located. If you monitor the Probe at this time, the submitted data will cause some of the Charts (related to Host distribution) to be inaccurate. If the user does not pay attention to the Host distribution, you can not check this option. Status is checked by default.

• Probe IP protocol selection: select IPv4 only, IPv6 only, IPv4/IPv6 mixed Probe.

• DNS protocol: includes two selection modes: DNS protocol Auto, DNS protocol is consistent with Probe protocol (SpecifyIPv4 task uses IPv4 DNS resolution, SpecifyIPv6 task uses IPv6 DNS resolution). The default is DNS protocol Auto.

• Intranet Monitoring: IDentifies whether the task is an Intranet Monitoring Task. If it is identified as an Intranet Monitoring Task, it will not be considered whether the DNS settings are correct, and if the Destination Host is an intranet address, it will not be filtered. Otherwise, the Monitoring data will be defined as Exception data when uploading Verify. Be sure to check this when testing the internal NetworkApplication.

• Bandwidth selection: If you select Specify Bandwidth Range, the Probe in this bandwidth Range will be used to run the Task.

• TLSVersion: SpecifyTLSVersion can be specified. Currently, four versions including Unlimited and 1.0-1.3 are provided.

• ExcludeProbes: Probes with ExcludeSpecifyID and SpecifyIP. ExcludeProbe will no longer perform Specify's monitoring task.

• Include Probes: Specify the Probe ID and IP of the task to be performed. These Probes will participate in the execution of the Task.

• Filter Probes by OS/Browser: User can use this function to filter Probe according to Operating SystemVersion and corresponding BrowserVersion. After configuration, the following Operating System and BrowserVersion Probes are no longer used in the monitoring task to execute the task. Supports two filter methods: Exclude and Include.

• Intelligent DNS selection: After enabling, the problems of long DNS Lookup Time and resolution failure will be improved and improved. (After ldns resolution fails, public DNS will be used for resolution)

• Only select probe probes with specified client plugin installed: Only Probes with the Specifyclient plugin installed will participate in the execution of the Task.

Client Behavior

• Distributed Monitoring: Indicates whether the monitoring task should be concentrated on the time point of the specified period or smoothly distributed on various time stages within Period when the monitoring task is issued. The Default value is No.

• Collect speedIndexPerformance Metric: Whether to collect speedIndexPerformance Metric. The default is not to collect. Currently only supported by Chrome.

• Use LocalStorage: Whether to use local storage. default: Not used.

• Support scrolling: Whether to support scrolling.

• DisableProbes DNS Client service: Whether to disable the local DNS Client service of the monitoring machine. The main function of the DNS Client service is that when a URL is accessed, after the IP address of the destination host of the URL is found for the first time, the Queryed name and IP address are recorded in the local DNS cache. If the URL is accessed again next time, the direct will be taken out of the cache. In this way, if the Enabled Windows DNS client service is enabled in settings, the DNS Time of the monitoring task may be 0.

• First Element as Main Element: The default first Status code is 200Elements as the main element. After Enable, define the first element as the main element. For example, it is applicable when there is a 302 redirect.

• Allow Client to Run Scripts: This option is one of the security StrategyOptions to ensure the security of Probes. It refers to whether to execute the Script (such as JavaScript, VBScript) in the page when executing the monitoring task. The settings of this item are to prevent malicious scripts in some web pages.

• Allow Popups: When there are pop-up windows in the monitoring task page, and this monitoring task does not care much about these pop-up windows, you can set this item to No, then when Probes execute this monitoring task, the pop-up window will not be monitored. The purpose of this Parameter is to prevent the content of some pop-up windows from being too large, such as some Flash advertisements. If these pop-up windows are allowed, the monitoring results may produce "element Timeout" errors or the Total Download Time is too long, which affects the performance of the monitoring task itself to be monitored.

• Ignore Client Time: Whether to add the time spent on the client during monitoring to the total time. For some Transaction Monitoring task, you need to consider whether this settings item is set.
  If unchecked, Total Download Time=Client Time+Network Layer Time
  If checked, Total Download Time=Network Layer Time

• Ignore Certificate Verification or Not: Do not verify whether the certificate is incorrect.

• First Screen Size: The width and height of the first screen can be flexibly set. If the settings are 0, the first screen will be calculated based on the default 1024*768; Unit is px.

• First Screen Sampling Interval: First Screen Sampling Interval.

• Customhosts: Resolve SpecifyDomain to fixed IP. A Domain can Specify multiple IP addresses. Multiple IP addresses are separated by English commas "," in the format: IP Domain, for example:

  • IPv4 protocol: 192.168.1.5,192.168.2.1 www.networkbench.com

  • IPv6 protocol: 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:d4 www.tingyun.com

  When multiple Custom Domain resolutions of settings are required, separate them with carriage returns.

Intelligent Noise Reduction

Intelligent Noise Reduction means that when the task SLA is insufficient, the task has error data or Exception data such as performancePoor, the Exception data will not be displayed temporarily, and the Exception data will be re-delivered to the client so that the client can re-execute. EnableIntelligent Noise Reduction will add additional Usage points, and the specific amount depends on the Threshold Setup and the overall Availability of the Task.

The Intelligent Noise Reduction function supports three noise reduction methods:

• When a certain City's ISPSLA is insufficient, it will be dispatched to the provincial capital City ISP in the same Province for execution (scheduled to the same Country abroad).

• Resend if a page error occurs (resend once).

• Resend when the performance index exceeds the threshold (resend once), Performance Metric and Threshold can be set according to actual needs.

HTTPParameter

• SpecifyQUIC protocol: "Quick UDP Internet Connection" is a protocol proposed by Google that uses UDP for multi-channel concurrent transmission.

• This URL requires HTTP authentication: If the set monitoring task requires Specify's User and Password to access, you need to enter the corresponding Username and Password here. Otherwise, when Probes execute this monitoring task, it will return the error "HTTP 401, Unauthorized" in the monitoring results.

• Start HTTP compression: The concept of HTTP compression is in the information transmission between the server and the Browser. If both parties support HTTP compression, zip compression will be used in the information transmission to improve performance. For Specify monitoring Task, if the monitoring task supports HTTP compression, this option should settings be Yes, and the Probes that execute this monitoring task will Enable HTTP compression. This option, if the settings are correct, will reflect better performance.

• Use Network User-Agent: refers to whether to send a piece of text to mark the access as coming from our Probes when the Probes execute the monitoring task, to distinguish it from the Normal Browser access. This allows some traffic analysis software to filter out the access to our Probes.

• Browser Language: If the set monitoring task needs to automatically return the page of the corresponding language according to the language settings of the visitor's Browser, you can check Use Browser Settings; When adaptive is selected, when Probes perform this monitoring task, it is determined based on the language set by the Probe's local IE Browser. If the customer only wants to test the page of specified language, they can select the corresponding language. Currently, the system supports Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English.

• CustomHTTP header: When IESendRequest, add Specify's HTTP header information to the Request header. When multiple Custom HTTP headers need to be set, separate them with carriage returns.

  Example 1: It is necessary to monitor the Download effect of a file, but the file is very large, 100M, and Normal monitoring will cause task timeout. At this time, we can use the configuring a custom HTTP header to Specify the first 1M of data in the download file on the monitoring end. The HTTP header is as follows: Range: bytes=1-1024000

  Example 2: It is necessary to monitor the download effect of a file (HTTP://www.testcdn.com/123.jpg), but the anti-leeching verification is set on the server. Normal monitoring will cause errors such as HTTP 403. At this time, we can bypass the anti-leeching verification through the configuring a custom HTTP header. The HTTP header is as follows: Referer:HTTP://www.testcdn.com/.

Content Options

• Expected Correct Text: When a monitoring task has such a requirement, it is necessary to monitor whether the page source code includes certain or certain texts. You can enter the text that needs to be included here (in the case of some text, you can enter the corresponding regular expression here). When Probes execute this monitoring task, if the set text is not found, the error "expected page content not found" will be returned in the monitoring results.

• Error text: When Include in the page source code expects Error textcontent, Trigger "finds content representing Page Error" error, and supports regular expression matching.

• Exclude Below element URLs during monitoring: Exclude some URLs that have nothing to do with the Specify monitoring Task. One URL per line. Requests that match the rules of Elements in the List will be blocked during the monitoring process. Full URLs and regular expressions are supported.
  When using regular expressions, the non-numeric and alphabetic parts of the URL need to use the escape character "\". For example, the expression for a URL that requires ExcludeAllDomain to be www.google.com is: www\.google\.com.

• Only access the following elements when monitoring URLs: Specify must include some URLs. One URL per line. Requests from elements other than List will be blocked during the monitoring process. Full URLs and regular expressions are supported.
  When using regular expressions, the non-numeric and alphabetic parts of the URL need to use the escape character "\". For example, the expression for a URL that requires ExcludeAllDomain to be www.google.com is: www\.google\.com.

• Element URL merging rules: used for to clarify the Elements in the page. If the Elements in the page contain question marks, the system will truncate the Parameter (i.e., after the question mark?) part of the element URL by default, and treat the same Elements before the question mark as one element. If special processing is required, you can set the corresponding regular expression, and the system will confirm the element based on this regular expression. One rule per line. Only affects element reportElementsList selection (does not affect Element Waterfall).

Hijacking Monitoring

Hijacking is a common risk on the Internet. Some ISPs or routing devices, as well as some computer viruses, will initiate DNS hijacking (hijacking an IP address) or Domain hijacking (injecting some JS files or links into the content) when a user visits a website. These behaviors can critically endanger the user's network security, even cause property damage, and also have a negative impact on the reputation of the website.

Network is based on Globally distributed Probes and continues to access the target website. Through the correct content feature library of settings, it determines whether non-feature library content appears in the current monitoring data, and compares the monitoring results with the content feature library to determine whether it has been hijacked.

Hijacking Monitoring can mainly detect two types of hijacking phenomena, including DNS hijacking and content hijacking. Users can monitor DNS hijacking through the IP whitelist and page hijacking through the domain whitelist.

IP input format (DNS hijacking):

During the monitoring process, the Host IP will be compared with the IPs in the whitelist. The monitoring is defined as a DNS hijacking error if it is not in the whitelist.

• SpecifyIP address, IPv4 example: 192.168.1.1, IPv6 example: 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:d4.

• Wildcard matching (IPv4), such as: 192.168.1.* means 192.168.1.1~254 All IP addresses. Only the last digit of the IP address (dotted decimal) supportsthe settings wildcard.

• Wildcard matching (IPv6), such as: 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:* means 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:0~FFFF.

CNAME input format (CNAME hijacking):

• Specify domain address, e.g.: www.tingyun.com. Via Wildcard match, e.g.: *.tingyun.com.

• * means All matches. When no content is entered, it means *.

Domain Input Format:

During the monitoring process, the loaded Element Domain is compared with the Domain in the whitelist. The monitoring is defined as a content hijacking error if it is not in the whitelist.

• SpecifyDomain address, for example: www.tingyun.com.

• Wildcard matching, for example: *.tingyun.com.

• * means All matches. If no content is entered, it means *.

• When entering the IP address, please do not add the port number, for example: 192.168.1.1.

IP Blacklist (DNS Hijacking)

IP Input Format (IP Hijacking):

• Specify IP address, (IPv4) e.g.: 192.168.1.1 (IPv6) e.g.: 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:d4

• Wildcard match, e.g.: 192.168.1.* means all IP addresses 192.168.1.1~254

• Wildcard matching, such as: 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:* means 2400:A480:aa:400:a1:b2:c3:0~FFFF

Check if 302 element is successful

302 Element Input Format

• HTTP://www.example.com (302 elements: supports regular settings, if there are multiple, take the first element)

• https://www.example.com/url1 (the first element after element 302)

• https://www.example.com/url2 (second element after element 302)

• After 302, configure at least 1, at most 2 elements, supports regex, regex uses full string match mode

Page task supports element blacklist configuration

Blacklist Configuration Input Format

• One URL per line, supports multiple full URLs and wildcard configuration

• Full URL: HTTP://www.tt.com

• Wildcard settings, such as: *.tt.com, *.png, HTTP://www.*.com*

Streaming Media Playback

• Playback Mode

  Users can choose four methods: VOD or Live, Live, VOD, and DVR. Live mode is usually used for radio stations, TV stations, website sports channels, etc. to broadcast live events, entertainment programs, etc. This ParameterSettings error will cause video playback to fail.

• Does Element Error affect Availability?

  The default setting Element Error does not affect Availability.

• Minimum buffer time before first playback

  This option is only valid for FLV format and MediaPlayer format. The Default value is 3 seconds.

  Buffering Time is a number that specifies the number of seconds of video to be buffered in Memory before the video stream is played for the first time. This value is important for FLV files streamed via RTMP (which are only buffered in Memory). For FLV files downloaded via HTTP progressive download, increasing this value will only provide a small benefit, although it may improve the viewing of high-quality video on older, slower computers.

  For example: FLV monitors buffer time settings for 5 seconds, when playing a Bitstream of 400Kb HTTP Streaming Media File, the player will download at least 5*400Kb=2000Kb of data before starting to play. The time required to download the 2000Kb of data is determined by the bandwidth of the Network ISP where the user is located. In the case of a 1Mb network speed, it will buffer for at least 2 seconds before it can be played. In the case of a 10Mb network speed, it will buffer for 0.2 seconds before it can be played.

• Player Signature

  The function is similar to the Streaming Media File identification code.

• Use Custom Network Streaming Player

  Complete the special Streaming Media Monitoring page URL path. When the streaming media uses anti-leeching functions such as page URL and token verification, monitoring using the local player will fail. At this time, you can write a page that includes a customized player and monitoring code, and deploy this customized page to a website under the Domain that can pass anti-hotlink verification. "Network player" is the URL path of the customized page.

  For example: streaming media under HTTP://www.streaming.com includes token verification, and this rule cannot be opened to the outside world, but the streaming media company can provide a customized player tokenPlayer.swf. At this time, we can write a customized page inside HTTP://www.net.com/streaming/s.htm and embed tokenPlayer.swf to complete the monitoring function. When configuring the task, specify "Network Player" as HTTP://www.net.com/streaming/s.htm.

Estimated Points Consumption

After Configuring the task, click the Estimated Points Consumption button to calculate the points consumed by the Task.