Network app
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The 
Network app is currently in preview. Availability and feature scope may change before General Availability.
The Network app centralizes network observability for network engineers and SREs. It brings device health and topology into the Dynatrace platform, so you can see network events alongside your other observability data.
Prerequisites
- A Dynatrace environment with SNMP device discovery configured in
Discovery & Coverage. - At least two private synthetic locations, required for ping mesh monitoring. Each site that you want in the ping mesh needs its own location, and each location needs an ICMP-capable engine.
- A CSV file that maps IP ranges (CIDR) to sites, required for the device health map and ping mesh. Topology works without it and shows devices without a site in a No site group. For details, see Site IP Ranges.
Permissions
The following table describes the required permissions.
| Permission | Description |
|---|---|
| Read network devices, interfaces, cloud services and their connections from Smartscape to build the inventories, topology and Network Map. |
| Read device, interface, cloud service and synthetic availability metrics shown in Overview, Devices & Services and the Network Map. |
| Read Davis events to show health alerts and health status for devices, interfaces, cloud services and sites. |
| Read logs of network devices, such as SNMP traps, shown in a device's details. |
| Read records from Grail buckets. Needed together with the logs and events scopes to query SNMP traps and Davis events. |
| Read saved filter segments so you can narrow the results with the segment selector. |
| Read the app's lookup tables. |
| Upload the app's lookup tables. |
| Check whether network extensions are installed, to show Setup task status. |
| Check whether network extensions have a monitoring configuration, to show Setup task status. |
| Grail Resource Store—clear the site-synthetic-locations mapping (ping mesh). |
| Read map settings to draw the Network Map, and count configured Davis anomaly detectors to show Custom Alerts setup status. |
| Read your saved user preferences. |
| Save your user preferences. |
| List ping mesh monitors. |
| Manage ping mesh monitors. |
| Save the category you set for a network device to its Smartscape node. |
| Read entity details documents from Documents API. |
Get started
To start monitoring your network, select Setup in the upper-right of the app header. Setup has four steps. Tasks that are done in another app (for example, Configure in Discovery & Coverage) open that app.
- Discovery: SNMP Device Discovery, Network Platforms (optional), and Site IP Ranges.
- Monitors: Site-to-Site Mesh, Device Ping (per-device ICMP up/down monitors), and SNMP Polling.
- Receivers: SNMP Traps.
- Alerts: Ready-Made Alerts, which activates the alert templates in
Infrastructure & Operations, and Custom Alerts. Health status is based on these alerts.
The following sections describe these tasks in more detail.
SNMP Device Discovery
Discover your SNMP devices in Discovery & Coverage. Once discovery completes, confirm that your devices appear in the Devices & Services view.
Site IP Ranges
Upload a CSV file that maps CIDR ranges to sites. The app derives each device's site and location from its IP address. The device health map and ping mesh require this mapping.
- In the app header, select Setup. The Discovery step opens.
- On the Site IP Ranges card, select Set up. If you already uploaded a file, select Update configuration.
- Select Download CSV template. To change an existing configuration, select Download current CSV instead and edit that file.
- Fill in the file as described in the following section, select Choose CSV file, and check the preview.
- Select Upload, and then select Close.
CSV file format
The file must contain the following columns, in any order.
cidr,site_name,geo.location.latitude,geo.location.longitude10.10.1.0/24,Vienna HQ,48.2082,16.373810.20.0.0/16,Linz DC,48.3069,14.2858
| Column | Description and rules | Example |
|---|---|---|
| IPv4 or IPv6 CIDR range. Required. Use the network address, such as |
|
| Name of the site, as shown in the app. Required. Rows with the same name belong to the same site and must have the same coordinates. |
|
| Latitude of the site, as a decimal number from -90 to 90. Required. Use a decimal point. |
|
| Longitude of the site, as a decimal number from -180 to 180. Required. Use a decimal point. |
|
Note the following about the file and the upload:
- The file can be up to 5 MiB and 10,000 data rows. The header row doesn't count.
- Other columns are rejected, except optional columns whose names start with
geo., such asgeo.city.name. Column names must be unique, and every row must have the same number of fields. Download current CSV contains only the four required columns. - The app validates the whole file before it uploads anything. If the file is invalid, the dialog shows the error and Upload stays disabled. For an invalid value, the error names the data row. The dialog previews the first 100 rows.
- Each upload replaces all existing data, so include every row you want to keep.
- A site can have several ranges. If ranges overlap, a device uses the most specific range, for example
/24over/16. - If the new file removes or renames a site and a ping mesh exists, the upload deletes the whole ping mesh: the site-to-location mapping and every monitor tagged
network-app:ping-mesh, not only the monitors of the removed site. Before you upload, the dialog lists the removed sites and the number of monitors. Adding sites or changing ranges and coordinates keeps the mesh. To set up the mesh again, see Site-to-Site Mesh.
Site-to-Site Mesh
Create ICMP monitors between your sites. This step requires Site IP Ranges with at least two sites.
- In Setup, go to Monitors, and then select Set up on the Site-to-Site Mesh card.
- Map each site to a private synthetic location, and then select Next. Each site needs its own location; you can't select one location for two sites. You can leave a site unmapped.
- Review the site pairs. Each row is one direction, from a source site to a target site.
- Select Create N monitors. If the wizard would create more than 50 monitors, confirm the number first. The monitors run continuously, consume Synthetic Monitoring, and count against the monitor limit of your environment. For details, see Ping mesh.
A pair shows as Not possible if:
- Either site has no location, or its location no longer exists.
- The source site's location has no ICMP-capable engine.
- The target site's location has no engine with an IP address.
The Details column shows the reason.
Other setup tasks
- Network Platforms (optional): Connect platform integrations, such as Cisco ACI, Cisco Catalyst Center, Meraki, SD-WAN, and Palo Alto Panorama, to add their topology. The card shows how many integrations you configured. Select Configure in Discovery & Coverage.
- Device Ping: Create ICMP up/down monitors for individual devices. These monitors are separate from the ping mesh. Requires SNMP Device Discovery. Select Configure in Discovery & Coverage.
- SNMP Polling: Poll devices for metrics such as interface counters, CPU, and memory. Requires SNMP Device Discovery. Select Configure in Discovery & Coverage.
- SNMP Traps: Receive SNMP traps from your devices. Select Configure in Discovery & Coverage.
- Ready-Made Alerts (optional): Select Configure in Infrastructure & Operations to open the page where you activate the alert templates.
- Custom Alerts: Select Configure in Settings to open
Settings > Analyze and alert > Alerts > All alerts, where you create custom metric events and anomaly detectors for your network KPIs.
To check whether you have configured custom alerts, the app needs read access to the builtin:davis.anomaly-detectors settings schema. In addition to the app permissions, your IAM policy must allow settings:objects:read with the condition settings:schemaId = "builtin:davis.anomaly-detectors".
For Device Ping and SNMP Polling, the card shows how many SNMP discovery configurations have all their devices covered. If the count is incomplete, changes can take a few minutes to appear.
Explore the app
Overview
Use Overview as your daily health check. It includes the following:
- A summary of network devices and cloud network services by category, with links to Devices & Services.
- A site map. Each bubble shows the worst device health color and the device count for a site.
- A Devices panel with five devices, showing health alerts, custom alerts, CPU, memory, and traffic. The counters show Total, Critical, and Warning devices. The devices are ranked by health alerts, then warnings, then traffic.
- Interface health.
Network Map
Network Map offers two views. The selected segment applies to both.
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
Device health | Site health on a geographic map. Use the Ping mesh toggle to show or hide latency and availability between sites |
Topology | LLDP/CDP connections between devices, grouped by site |
Devices & Services
Devices & Services is a filterable inventory of network devices grouped by category, network interfaces, cloud network services, and IP Inventory, which lists the IP addresses of monitored entities. Select a device to open its details. The header shows its health, and the tabs show its properties, interfaces, metrics, network availability, events, and neighbors.
The Circuits group (WAN circuits, SD-WAN overlays, and VPN tunnels) is a placeholder in the preview and shows no data yet.
Concepts
Health status
Health status shows you which devices need attention first. It is based on the active alerts and warning signals of each device.
- Critical: The device has at least one active alert that isn't a warning signal, such as a health alert or a custom alert. A health alert raises a problem.
- Warning: The device has at least one active warning signal and no other active alert.
- No alerts: The device has no active alerts or warning signals.
Health status follows the selected timeframe. For a timeframe that ends in the past, it shows the alerts that were open during that timeframe and leaves out warning signals. Overview always shows the last hour.
A site shows the worst health status of its devices, so you can spot affected sites at a glance. For details, see Health alerts and warning signals.
Sites
Sites are your main way of checking where a problem occurs and how far it spreads. A site is a physical location that groups your network devices. The app derives each device's site from its IP address, using the CIDR ranges in your Site IP Ranges file. If a device's IP address matches more than one range, the most specific range applies.
In Network Map, Topology shows devices that don't match any range in a No site group. Device health doesn't show these devices, nor devices without an IP address or devices at a site without coordinates.
Topology discovery
Use Topology to see how devices are connected, so you can tell which other devices a problem on one device might affect. It shows the physical connections between your devices, based on LLDP and CDP neighbor discovery.
If a link you expect is missing, check that LLDP or CDP is enabled on both ends of the link, that both devices are monitored with the SNMP Autodiscovery extension, and Neighbor discovery is enabled in the extension configuration. The link must also be reported within the selected timeframe.
Ping mesh
A ping mesh helps you find out whether a problem is in the connection between sites, for example when latency rises or availability drops. It measures latency and availability between your sites. The app maps each site to one private synthetic location and creates a separate ICMP monitor for each ordered pair of sites. A mesh of N sites therefore has up to N × (N − 1) monitors.
The ping mesh monitors run continuously and consume Synthetic Monitoring. The number of monitors grows quickly with the number of sites, for example 90 monitors for 10 sites. They also count against the monitor limit of your environment. For details on how network availability monitors are billed, see Real User and Synthetic Monitoring overview (DPS).
To set up a ping mesh, see Site-to-Site Mesh.
Device categories
Device categories help you browse your devices by role. The app groups network devices into the following categories: Routers, Firewalls, Switches, Wireless, and Load balancers. The app assigns a category based on the device type and name. Devices that don't match any other category are listed under Switches. To correct a category, open the device details, select Change category, and choose a category. A category you set takes precedence; select Auto to go back to the automatic category. The change can take up to a minute to appear everywhere.
Use cases
- Onboarding: Add network monitoring with a guided approach.
- Network overview: Get a quick overview of the health of all network devices and services.
- Network map: Explore device health and topology in one visual surface.
- Devices & Services: Inspect all network devices and cloud network services.
Other
Provide feedback
To share your feedback about the Network app, select Share feedback in the app header.
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