Console comes with a set of FlexViews that lets you view a wide variety of information about the devices on your network as a table, bar graph, line graph, or pie chart. When NetSight Console is initially installed, the Interface Summary is the default FlexView, accessible from the Interface Summary tab in the right panel. It's a good place to start using FlexViews.
To begin using FlexViews, we'll select a single device and take a look at the information that it returns:
- Select a device in the left panel (choose a device, such as a router, where there is traffic). FlexViews always present information about your selection in the left panel.
- Click the Interface Summary tab in the right panel.
- Click the
button on the FlexView toolbar and select Open from the menu. A file browser opens to the FlexViews folder. This is where all of the FlexViews that come with Console are stored. To see a catalog of all these FlexViews, refer to How to Export a FlexView Catalog.
- Navigate into the Interface folder and open the Interface Statistics.tpl file.
- Set the Poll Frequency to 0 and click
(Retrieve). This forces a single poll cycle to retrieve information from the selected device.
The Retrieve button changes to a
(Stop button) and the progress of the poll is reported on the Console's Status bar. The table fills with the information returned from the device and when the polling is completed, the button returns to a Retrieve button.
You can click on column headings to sort the table using the information from a column. You can right click anywhere in the table body to choose from several options on the popup menu. Refer to Right-Click Menus in the FlexView help topic to learn more about right-click menu options.
- Click the In_Octets column heading twice. The first click sorts the column in ascending order, the second sorts the column in descending order. If there is no traffic, as indicated by the In_Octets values, select and poll another device until you find one that shows some traffic.
Viewing the table information as a pie graph or bar graph
- With the FlexView containing your device information, click
(Pie Graph). A Pie graph, is displayed above the table information in the
left panel. The additional controls for the graph are available from the tabbed panel at the right of the window. The center panel is a legend showing the current graph selections.
- Click the Columns tab and check In Octets and Out Octets. The graph content reflects the contribution to the pie from In Octets and Out Octets.
- Click the General Controls tab. The content of this tab changes, depending on whether you've selected one column or multiple columns. With multiple columns selected, the pie can show you the minimum, average, or maximum values for each of the selected columns. When only one column is selected, you can display several rows in the pie, showing the contribution from each row as a slice in the pie. If you hover over a particular slice in the pie, a tool tip is displayed with the value for that slice.
- Now, click
(Bar Graph). The view changes to show
the values from the same two columns, each as a separate bar.
Both Pie and Bar graphs provide a snapshot of the values at a given point in time. A line graph on the other hand, can show you how specific values change over time.
Viewing the table information as a line graph
- Set the Poll Frequency to 5 (seconds). Once, you click Retrieve, Console automatically start retrieving information from your left panel selection at the specified interval.
- Click
(Line Graph). A blank Line graph is added above the table and a Graph Data tab is added to the table
information in the bottom panel. Also, the Line Graph Controls tab is now active in the tabbed panel at the right of the window. The center panel is a legend showing the current graph selections.
- Adjust the pane sizes to allow viewing the entire graph and access to tabbed panel settings.
- Click the Columns tab and check only In Octets.
- Click the General Controls tab, select Highest and set the number of rows to sample to 3. (The selection of the highest rows to be plotted is determined by the values returned from the first query.) Leave the other settings blank for now. This should let you explore the graph operation without too many plots.
- Click the Line Graph Controls tab and set:
- Graph Type - Delta
- Graph 5 Samples
- Check Moving Avg - Samples and set the samples to 3.
- Leave the remaining settings unchecked.
- Click Retrieve. The Retrieve button changes to
and the FlexView begins polling at the specified Poll Frequency and plotting three lines, one for each of the three highest values.
A (blank) gap in a line indicates that there was no response from the device for that poll and no point was plotted. Dashed lines begin plotting the Moving Averages with the third poll cycle. The polling will continue until the Retrieve button is clicked to stop polling.
For information on related topics: