Questions & Answers

Provider FAQs

Before I go meet this customer, how is their network behaving?

Simply log in to Highlight and Select the customer folder. It should be in your 'Favourites', of course, if it's one of your accounts. Click the Network Status tab to see how things are right now - any outages, bottlenecks or performance issues. Drill down to examine these, or use the Sales Toolbar for a broader picture : with one click here you can see who from that customer has been logging in to Highlight, and how often ; whether there are opportunities to sell more bandwidth, or to be proactive and warn the customer of impending congestion ; and whether the customer has had any problems such as outages you should be aware of. 

How quickly can I produce a monthly Service Report for my customers?

Depending on how well you have Highlight set up - for example, pulling your customers into your' Favourites' folder - you can do this in minutes.

I'm in Customer Support : Why does Highlight reduce No-Fault-Found situations?

Responding to a customer complaint often means looking at how things are at the time they call - connecting to a router or viewing line statistics. The problem may have cleared, or simply 'not be happening' when you look, leading to the frustrating waste of resources that are no-fault-found tickets. With Highlight, it takes you 30 seconds to find a view of exactly what's going on with a Leased or DSL Line, or MPLS connection. You can see graphically and in real time what's happening now, and what's been happening that day, previous week, or any time over the previous year - with no loss of granularity or detail. You can spot an earlier problem, see if there's a pattern, involve other members of your team. Our Service Provider partners have used this kind of visibility to significantly cut the number of NFF tickets they see each month.

Enterprise FAQs

How do I know my CoS is balanced and working?

When a network runs Class of Service, traffic into and out of each location will be segregated into classes, usually according to Application - for example, delay-sensitive cricital-application traffic would be put into a 'Premium' class. The core network will handle these classes differently, choosing a high-speed path for Premium traffic. Highlight recognises these classes, and will show you first the overall 'Bearer' traffic (all the traffic in and out of the site) and alongside that traffic for each Class - so you can see:

• That traffic is being correctly segregated (you'd be amazed how many networks have been carefully set up with CoS but still have all traffic pouring into the 'Default' class);
• How much bandwidth you're using in each class - because premium traffic is expensive ;
• Delay across each class, so you can check Premium routes really do deliver lower delay than default classes.

Was my line really down, or was there a network problem somewhere else?

Highlight is smart about detecting outages. It knows the difference between an actual line break (which will be shown in red on your Availability report) and a loss of contact caused by a problem somewhere else in the network (which will be shown in Blue). The first type of outage counts against availability statistics, the second doesn't. Circuits sometimes go down and up again very briefly so that normal polling by a management tool doesn't catch them : Highlight can catch these short outages and they're shown as green markers on the chart. Outages due to a device reset (for example, being powered off or rebooted) come up as a black marker.

How do I measure delay between my locations and our data centre?

Highlight can use Cisco or Juniper routers, anywhere in your network, to carry out end-to-end performance tests. Setting these up is easy, and the results are shown in clear graphical form alongside reports the links themselves - so you can match erratic delay with bursts of traffic, for example, and even see which application caused it. If you already have routers from these vendors in your network, you need no extra hardware. If not, one small device at the data centre can perform tests to multiple locations.

Can I get an email alert when something goes wrong?

Yes, and it's easy to set up. Highlight's Access Pack includes our News Insight module, which allows Highlight to Email you if specific conditions arise. You control which parts of your network get this treatment, how often the emails are sent, and which conditions to be told about. For more details, see the News Insight feature.

What will it cost me to put Highlight on my network?

Highlight Access, Performance and Premium Packs  are priced on a flexible per-node per-month basis, with discounts available for volume purchases.  The total monthly price is based on the number of nodes in your network.  There are no set-up fees, no installation charges, and no hardware or software licenses to purchase. 

Can I monitor my web server?

Yes : highlight's Performance Pack lets you carry out tests to Web services, loading a specific page on a regular basis and recording the response time. You can see how page load times vary through the day and week, and if the speed drops below a set level (or the site goes down) you can set News Insight to send you a mail.

Risk? How does using Highlight reduce my risk?

Unlike conventional Network Visibility tools which require a sizable capital outlay, Highlight is priced on a Pay-as-you-Go basis : you only pay for what you're actually using. As your requirements grow, or you want to monitor more of your network (or customer base), the price rises in line with the functionality provided - and subscription levels drop rapidly as the size of your monitored network increases. Highlight therefore cuts risk by letting you avoid big financial commitments, and directly match spend against value delivered.

Why is my DSL bandwidth set to that odd number?

Although your Service Provider quotes bandwidths for DSL like 2M or 8M, these are 'ideal' speeds and often not reachable at specific locations. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but newer DSL routers will use a technology called 'DSL Max' to test out your line over the first few days of use, figure out the fastest 'reliable' speed, and use that. Highlight is smart enough to look into DSL routers, see what speed has been adopted for an individual DSL line, and use that to calibrate reports. Often this is an 'odd' number like 7.72Mb.

If I see a problem, how can I show it to someone else?

Use the 'Meeting Point' feature in Highlight to involve other people. From the 'Detail' view, simply click the 'Send an Invitation' button, fill in the email of the person you want to show the report to, add a comment, and click 'Send'. They will receive an email and be able to click straight through to the same view of the same report, for the same time.

Why do you say Highlight is good for fault-finding?

Much of fault-finding is about spotting patterns - seeing if this is the first time an error has occurred, or if it happens every day, or when it started. Highlight's graphical, visual presentation Simply checking