Leveraging the Dashboard

Goal

To reference the Accelerated View dashboard in order to verify the status of deployed devices.

Setup

Accelerated View's dashboard doesn't require any configuration. It offers a variety of visualized metrics, and can be filtered to display the status of sub-organizations as needed.

Overview

Donut Charts

Deployed Status: Devices in aView can be toggled between deployed and undeployed. Only deployed devices are monitored for reporting and alerting purposes. Of the 17 devices listed in the screenshot above, 11 are deployed -- which correlates to the number of devices referenced in the Connectivity Status and Network Type charts.

NOTE: Routers are considered undeployed by default when they are imported into Accelerated View. When connecting to the Internet for the first time, whether via a cellular connection or over Ethernet (from a wireline ISP), the Accelerated device will deploy itself. However, if a device is manually toggled from "deployed" to "undeployed" it will not re-deploy itself automatically. Please reference the documentation on Changing Device Settings for more information.

Connectivity Status: Accelerated View begins tracking a device's connectivity status after it has missed a heartbeat, the syslog data sent to aView every 30 minutes by default. (This interval can be adjusted.) It will report a device as "down" once its grace period has expired, which has a default value of 109 minutes. These two parameters -- the heartbeat and the grace period -- combine to create a 139-minute delay in flagging a device as down. This buffer is intended to prevent false positives for reboots, device relocation, etc., but it can be adjusted for more aggressive alerting.  

Cellular Network Type: This indicates the cellular access technology utilized by each device. The color codes match that of the LTE status indicator on all Accelerated routers: blue for 4G and green for 3G.

Signal Strength Histogram

This graph displays a summary of signal strength for the organization. It becomes particularly useful in ensuring that routers are installed in an optimal location. Most models of Accelerated routers (i.e. all aside from the SR-series) are able to leverage passive PoE to extend the range of deployment. Typical requirements for integrating cellular connectivity include terminating the connection to another piece of equipment -- whether it is a firewall appliance for dual-WAN failover or a digital kiosk leveraging LTE for primary connectivity -- and too often installers assume the cellular router needs to be co-located with the other pieces of IT infrastructure.

Instead, leveraging (passive) PoE, Accelerated routers can be mounted independent of these requirements. Up to 300ft of Ethernet cabling can be used to ensure the device is powered, via the PoE injector, and that the data drop is able to reach whatever client device may need to be wired for cellular connectivity. A battery pack is also available to provide power to the router during a site survey, which allows the installation technician to confirm where reception is best for any given location.

Routers with connections under 30% should be verified to ensure there is no better deployment location available.

Location-Based Alerts

Routers flagged for alerts will be displayed on the map to help isolate reasons for any potential outage.

Alert Devices Table

Similarly, routers that have generated alerts will be listed in the corresponding table at the bottom of the dashboard.