Introduction to SurePath

Introduction to SurePath

What is SurePath in ENA v18.0?

Why use SurePath?

How does SurePath help you understand path behavior and performance?

User permissions

Introduction to SurePath

With services and applications moving out to the cloud (e.g. Office 365, Salesforce), the visibility, monitoring and troubleshooting of these technologies is moving beyond network firewalls. Entuity's proprietary SurePath technology uses agent-based and agentless technology to investigate problems with cloud applications, you have to navigate both your own network and other people's (the internet) to find the problem. It is difficult to prove on whose network the problem exists.

ENA v18.0 introduces the agent-based (tcptraceroute) and agentless (SNMP) SurePath technology. SurePath is a tool that traces all nodes (hops) between a source and destination, exposing detail for both layer 2 and layer 3.

What is SurePath in ENA v18.0?

Agent-based SurePath uses tcptraceroute. tcptraceroute creates a tcp connection to the endpoint destination and sends packets over that connection, whether the endpoint is in your network or beyond it (e.g. to SaaS services). This method enables Entuity to more closely mimic the behavior of applications and therefore the user experience.

Through the Required and Blacklist functionality, SurePath also enables you to specify which nodes must appear in a path, and which ones you do not want to appear in a path. When the path is run, you will be alerted when nodes do not comply with the specified required or blacklist settings.

SurePath also enhances tcptraceroute by optionally removing queuing latency along each hop in the path, so that you can see just the routing delay at each node (rather than the delay inclusive of queuing delay).

SurePath retains end-to-end path latency, enabling you to see what a path looked like at any one point in time.

Why use SurePath?

• SaaS/Cloud monitoring - monitor the network performance of SaaS/Cloud applications and be alerted to problems when they arise, e.g. MS Office has moved from on-prem to the cloud (Office365) and you want to monitor the performance of Office365.
• WAN site monitoring - monitor the performance links to remote WAN sites/branches.
• MPLS networks - monitor performance on my MPLS-enabled network, including seeing each layer 3 hop in the MPLS network.
• Path validation for new applications - validate the performance of paths before deploying a new application, e.g. should you deploy to AWS or Azure? Which circuit offers the best performance?
• Redundancy - failovers - be alerted when your primary WAN circuit fails over to a backup circuit, or when traffic goes over routes they should not go over.
• Routing loops - troubleshoot routing loops that are causing performance issues for users.

How does SurePath help you understand path behavior and performance?

Trace and visualize paths across your network and beyond:

• trace and visualize a path between a source and its destination (e.g. between London office and Office 365 servers).
• aggregated traceroute batchs to ensure accuracy of path mapping, showing all the possible paths a packet could have taken from source to destination.
• monitor SaaS connections from your network.
• trace the path of your traffic across multiple locations, e.g. London > NY via Paris, or Moscow > NY via Frankfurt.
• see the route taken by various traffic types from one location to another, and complement Entuity flow data.

Identify where problems might exist:

• use visual aids to help narrow down where the problem might exist.
• automatically detect performance and connectivity issues, and receive events and incidents on these issues.
• Troubleshoot in real-time and historically.
• monitor remote office brances for performance and connectivity.

See real-time performance issues:

• ensure ISPs are meeting agreed business SLAs by ensuring performnace and connectivity to specific nodes and destinations.
• monitor application-based latency to services beyond your network (cloud, SaaS)

Manage the routes you want paths to take:

• use Required and Blacklist functionality to specify the nodes that you do and do not want to see in a path.
• receive event notifications when nodes are absent that should be present, and when nodes appear that should not be present.

User permissions

From Entuity v19.0 P03 upwards, users will require the SurePath Administration tool permission in order to create, modify and delete paths, and to access the SurePath administration pages.

Without the SurePath Administration tool permission, a user can only view paths, but cannot create, modify or delete them, and cannot access the SurePath administration pages.

To set the SurePath Administration tool permission:

User tool permissions are set via the Account Management page. Please see this article for help on how to set user tool permissions.