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Cisco Digital Network Architecture Center User Guide, Release 1.2.1

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Book Title

Cisco Digital Network Architecture Center User Guide, Release 1.2.1

Chapter Title

Assure Client Health

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Updated:
August 14, 2019

Chapter: Assure Client Health

Assure Client Health

About Clients

A client is an end device (computer, phone, and so on) that is connected to a network device (access point or switch). Cisco DNA Center supports both wired and wireless clients.

Monitor and Troubleshoot the Health of All Client Devices

A client is an end device (computer, phone, and so on) that is connected to a network device (access point or switch). Cisco DNA Center supports both wired and wireless clients.

Use this procedure to get a global view of the health of all the wired and wireless client devices and to determine if there are potential issues that must be addressed.

Before you begin

Configure Cisco DNA Assurance. See Basic Workflow for Configuring Cisco DNA Assurance.

Procedure

Step 1

From the Cisco DNA Center home page, click Assurance.

The Overall Health window appears.

Step 2

Click Health > Clients.

The Client Health page appears with the following information.

The colors in the charts represent the health of the client devices.

  • Red—Poor client devices. Health score range is 1 to 3.

  • Orange—Fair client devices. Health score range is 4 to 7.

  • Green—Good client devices. Health score range is 8 to 10.

  • Gray—Inactive client devices. Health score is 0.

Table 1. Client Health Page
Item Description

All SSIDs, All Bands, and Actions drop-down list

  • All SSIDs—Displays information for the SSID you choose from the drop-down list. Default is All SSIDs.

  • All Bands—Displays information for the band frequency you choose from the drop-down list. Options are: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, or All Bands.

  • Actions—Allows you to make changes to the dashboard display when you choose Edit Dashboards from the drop-down list. See Change the Position of a Dashlet and Create a Custom Dashboard.

24 Hours drop-down list and Timeline Slider

  • 24 Hours—Displays information on the window based on the time range you select. Do the following:

    1. From the 24 Hours drop-down list, choose a time range: 3 hours, 24 hours, or 7 days.

    2. Specify the Start date and time; and the End date and time.

    3. Click Apply. This sets the time boundaries on the timeline slider.

  • Timeline Slider—Allows you to specify a more granular time range.

    Move the timeline slider bars to the desired time range, and then click Apply.

Client Health Map or Hierarchical Site/Building View dashlet

The Hide or Show button, allows you to hide or display this dashlet. By default, the Client Health Map dashlet displays.

This dashlet contains two buttons that allow you to display the health of the client devices in a map view or site/building view.

  • Client Health Map—Click the map button to display health of all the client sites on a geographic location-oriented client health map. By default, the client sites that are represented are color-coded according to the severity of the problem.

    The color of the health score represents its severity. The health is measured on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best score, and a score of 0 for inactive clients.

  • Hierarchical Site View or Building View—Click the button, and then choose the Hierarchical Site View or Building View from the drop-down list. Based on what you choose, the table displays information. To view information about a specific site, building, or floor, click Apply in the appropriate row; information is refreshed based on your selection.

Client Health dashlet

This dashlet includes the following information:

  • Client Health Summary area—Contains a Client Health Summary score and a client count distribution trend chart. The Client Health Summary score is the percentage of healthy (good) wired and wireless client devices in your overall network or selected site. The client count distribution trend chart (located below the health score) shows the count of all clients over time, shown as a stacked area chart based on their health scores. See Client Health Summary Score.

  • Wireless and Wired areas—Contains the following:

    • Score—The client category (Wired and Wireless) health score is the percentage of healthy (good) client devices in a target category. See Client Category Health Score.

    • Trend Chart—Health of clients displayed in a trend chart (located on the right of the health score).

    • Donut Chart—Provides a count of poor, fair, good, and inactive client devices. The client devices are color-coded and broken down according to the severity of the scores. Hover your cursor over a specific color on the donut chart to display the number of clients associated with that color.

      • Red—Poor client devices. Health score range is 1 to 3.

      • Orange—Fair client devices. Health score range is 4 to 7.

      • Green—Good client devices. Health score range is 8 to 10.

      • Gray—Inactive client devices. Health score is 0.

    Click View Details to open a side bar with additional details. From the side bar, click a color in the chart to populate or refresh the data in the table below.

Client Onboarding Times, Connectivity RSSI, Connectivity SNR, Client Count Per SSID, Client Count Per Band, DNS, and Connectivity Physical Link dashlets

Analyzes the health of the client devices every 30 minutes and updates the charts in the dashlets listed below. Click a dashlet to open a side bar with additional drill-down capabilities.

  • Client Onboarding Times—Distribution of all client's attempts to onboard, in all sites or a selected site, over time.

  • Connectivity RSSI—Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) distribution for all clients, in all sites or a selected site.

  • Connectivity SNR—Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) distribution for all clients, in all sites or a selected site.

  • Client Count Per SSID—Distribution of the number of clients per SSID, in all sites or a selected site, over time.

  • Client Count Per Band—Distribution of the number of clients per band frequency (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), in all sites or a selected site, over time.

  • DNS—Distribution of the DNS requests and response counters, in all sites or a selected site, over time.

  • Connectivity Physical Link—Distribution of wired client device link state: the number of devices that had their physical links up, down, and had errors.

Click View Details to open a side bar with additional details. From the side bar, click a color in the chart to populate or refresh the data in the table below.

Client Devices Table dashlet

Allows you filter, view, and export client device information:

  • Filter the table based on client type, client health, and data.

    • Client Type—Options are wired and wireless clients.

    • Client Health—Options are:

      • Poor—Client devices with a health score range from 1 to 3.

      • Fair—Client devices with a health score range from 4 to 7.

      • Good—Client devices with a health score range from 8 to 10.

      • Inactive—Client devices with a health score of 0.

    • Data—Options are Onboarding Time > Threshold, Association Time > Threshold, DHCP > Threshold, AAA > Threshold, and RSSI > Threshold.

      To determine the threshold values for onboarding, association time, DHCP, and AAA, from the Client Attempts on Onbording Time dashlet, click View Details. From the side bar that opens, click the appropriate option, and then view the value in the Threshold legend.

      To determine the threshold value for RSSI, see the Threshold legend in the Connectivity RSSI dashlet.

  • View client device information in a table format. The client device table lists information about client devices, such as user ID, hostname, MAC address, IP address, device type, last heard, location, VLAN ID, SSID, and the following information:

    • Overall Health Score—This score is the sum of the onboarding and connected scores.

    • Onboarding Score—Indicates the experience of a client device while connecting to the network; whether the client connected (onboarded) to the network successfully or not. For more information, see Client Onboarding Score.

    • Connected Score—Indicates the experience of a client device after the device is connected to the network. For more information, see Client Connectivity Score.

    • Connected To—Provides the following information:

      • Wireless Clients—Provides the name of the AP or Cisco WLC to which the client device is connected.

      • Wired Client—Provides the name of the switch to which the client device is connected.

  • Display a 360° view of a client by clicking the MAC address of a client device.
Step 3

To display a 360° view of the client, do one of the following:

  • In the Client Devices table, click the MAC address of the device.
  • In the Search field (located on the top-right corner), enter one of the following: host name, user ID (authenticated through Cisco ISE), IP address, or MAC address.

Client Health Summary Score

The Client Health Summary score is the percentage of the number of healthy client devices (a health score from 8 to 10) divided by the total number of client devices. The score is calculated every 5 minutes.

For example: 90% health score = 90 client devices with health score from 8 to 10 / 100 client devices.

Client Category Health Score

The Client Category Health score (Wireless or Wired) is the percentage of the number of healthy client devices (a health score from 8 to 10) in a target category, divided by the total number of client devices in that category. The score is calculated every 5 minutes.

For example: 90% health score = 90 client devices in a target category with health score from 8 to 10 / 100 client devices in that category.

The Individual Client Health score is the sum of the Client Onboarding score and the Client Connectivity score. The client health score ranges from 1 to 10, with a score of 0 for inactive clients. It is calculated as follows:

  • Wired Client—Link to first switch is up, authentication and authorization is successful, IP address is received. Client score is 10.

  • Wireless Client—Client joined the network and has good connection in terms of the RSSI and SNR KPIs.

Client Onboarding Score

The Client Onboarding score indicates the experience of a client device while connecting to the network.

  • If a client connects to the network successfully, the score is 4.

  • If a client is unable to connect to the network, the score is 1.

The Client Onboarding score is calculated as follows:

  • Wired Client—Link to the first switch is up, authentication and authorization is successful, and IP address is received.

  • Wireless Client—Client Onboarding score range is from 1 to 4. When the client connects to the network successfully, the score is 4. If the client is unable to connect to the network, the score is 1.

Client Connectivity Score

The Client Connectivity score indicates the experience of the client device after the device is connected to the network.

The Client Connectivity score is calculated as follows:

  • Wired Client—Connectivity score can be 0, 2, or 6. Connectivity to the DNS server or link errors determines the Connectivity score and the resulting Overall Health score as shown below:

    • If a client onboards successfully, but is unable to connect to the DNS server, the Connectivity score is 0.

    • If a client onboards successfully and is able to connect to a DNS server, but has link errors, the Connectivity score is 2 and the Overall Health score is 6.

    • If the client onboards successfully and there are no link errors between the client and the first hop switch, the Connectivity score is 6 and the Overall Health score is 10.

  • Wireless Client—Connectivity score range is 0 - 6. The RSSI and SNR range determines the Connectivity score and the resulting Overall Health score is calculated as the weighted average of the RSSI-driven Connectivity score and the SNR-driven Connectivity score.

    RSSI-Driven Connectivity Score

    • If RSSI is less than -72 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 0.

    • If RSSI is equal to -71 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 1.

    • If RSSI is equal to -70 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 2.

    • If RSSI is equal to -69 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 3.

    • If RSSI is equal to or greater than -68 dBm and less than -55 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 4.

    • If RSSI is equal to or greater than -55 dBm and less than -45 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 5.

    • If RSSI is equal to or greater than -45 dBm, the RSSI-Driven Connectivity score is 6.

    SNR-Driven Connectivity Score

    • If SNR is from 0 to 9, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 0.

    • If SNR is equal to 10, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 1.

    • If SNR is 11 or 12, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 2.

    • If SNR is 13 or 14, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 3.

    • If SNR is 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 4.

    • If SNR is from 20 to 39, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 5.

    • If SNR is equal to or greater than 40, the SNR-Driven Connectivity score is 6.

Monitor and Troubleshoot the Health of a Client Device

Use this procedure to view details about a specific client device and to determine if there are potential issues that must be addressed.

Procedure

Step 1

From the Cisco DNA Center home page, click Assurance.

The Overall Health window appears.

Step 2

Click Health > Clients.

The Client Health window appears.

Step 3

Do one of the following:

  • In the Client Devices table, click the hyper linked Identifier or the MAC address of the device.
  • In the Search field (located on the top-right corner), enter one of the following: user ID (authenticated through Cisco ISE), IP address, or MAC address.

A 360° view of the client device appears with the following information.

Table 2. Client 360 Page
Item Description

Individual Client Health Score

If you search by the host name or user ID, the Individual Client Health score that is displayed is the minimum score of all the monitored client devices associated with that user. For more information, see Individual Client Health Score.

If you search by MAC address or IP address, the Individual Client Health score is the health score for that client device.

The color of the health score represents its severity. The health is measured on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best score, and a score of 0 indicates that data could not be obtained.

  • Red—Poor client devices. Health score range is 1 to 3.

  • Orange—Fair client devices. Health score range is 4 to 7.

  • Green—Good client devices. Health score range is 8 to 10.

  • Gray—Inactive client devices. Health score is 0.

Note 

For clients that are disconnected from the network, the score is represented as a - -.
Client Device tabs

Details about each of the client's devices is represented in a separate tab, for example, username-macbook or username-iphone.

Hover your cursor over a tab to view details about a device, such as device type, OS version, MAC address, and IP address.

Historical Health, Events, and Band Frequency Graph

Health, events, and band frequency information about the selected client device over a period of time displayed in a graph.

  • Health—To obtain the health score at a particular time, hover your cursor over the time instance on the graph, for example, you can hover your cursor at 7:00, 7:05, 7:20, and so on.

    When you click a time, for example, 7:05, the entire page is refreshed, providing updates for that point of time. Note that the timestamp next to each category (Issues, Onboarding, Event Viewer, Connectivity, and so on) is also refreshed.

  • Events—Event data is displayed by color-coded vertical bars on the graph. Green vertical bars indicate successful event(s) and the red vertical bars indicate event(s) that failed.

    Each vertical bar represents 5-minutes of time. Multiple significant events can be generated during each 5-minute window. Hover your cursor over the vertical bar to get more information about the event(s).

  • Band—Band frequency data is color-coded and displayed as a horizontal line at the bottom of the graph. Light blue color represents 2.4 GHz band frequency and purple color represents 5 GHz band frequency. A gap in the horizontal line indicates that either the client device is not connected to the network or that the client device is not sending data.

If you do not want to view the event or band frequency data in the graph, uncheck the Events or Band check box in the Displayed Data area.

Step 4

View information about issues, onboarding, event viewer, path trace, application experience, and detail information under the appropriate category.

Table 3. Categories in the Client 360 Page
Category Description

Issues category

Issues, if any, that must be addressed. Issues are listed based on the time stamp. The most recent issue is listed first.

Click an issue to view the corresponding details, such as the description of the issue, impact, and suggested actions. To resolve an issue, from the Status field, choose Resolve.

Click Resolved Issues to view the list of issues that are resolved.

For information about the types of issues, see Issues Detected by Assurance.

Onboarding category

Topology of how a client got on the network, including information about the following services: AAA, DHCP, and DNS.

Example of wired client topology: Client > Switch > Router

Example of wireless client topology: Client > SSID > Access Point > WLC

Event Viewer category

Lists scenarios and the sequence of sub-events that led to each scenario. This allows you to pin-point during which sub-event an issue occurred. The following scenarios are provided:

  • Re-Authentication

  • Broadcast Rekey—Process of changing the session key—the encryption key of an ongoing communication—in order to limit the amount of data encrypted with the same key.

  • Onboarding

  • Delete

  • INTRA-Roaming

When an issue occurs, that event is marked red, otherwise it is green. The second column provides additional information about the issue, such as the error message, and the AP and Cisco WLC to which the client device is connected. The third column provides the time stamp when the event occurred.

Click an event, to view details about that event in the right pane.

Path Trace category

Click Run New Path Trace to display a network topology between a specified source device and a destination device. The topology includes the path's direction and the devices along the path, including their IP addresses. The display also shows the protocol of the devices along the path (Switched, STP, ECMP, Routed, Trace Route) or other source type.

See Perform a Path Trace.

Application Experience category

Applications running on a client device with their qualitative and quantitative metrics.

To view the metrics in a chart format, select the radio button next to an application in the table. A side bar opens with the relevant information.

See About Application Experience and View the Application Experience of a Client Device.

Detail Information category

Contains the following tabs: Device Info, RF, and Connectivity. Click each tab to get the appropriate information.

Note 

For Apple devices, the iOS Analytics tab is also provided.

Individual Client Health Score

The Individual Client Health score is the sum of the Client Onboarding score and the Client Connectivity score. The client health score ranges from 1 to 10, with a score of 0 for inactive clients. It is calculated as follows:

  • Wired Client—Link to first switch is up, authentication and authorization is successful, IP address is received. Client score is 10.

  • Wireless Client—Client joined the network and has good connection in terms of RSSI and SNR KPIs.

See the following topics:

Trace the Path of a Device

About Path Trace

You can perform a path trace between two nodes in your network—a specified source device and a specified destination device. The two nodes can be a combination of wired or wireless hosts or Layer 3 interfaces or both. In addition, you can specify the protocol that the Cisco DNA Center controller should use to establish the path trace connection, either TCP or UDP.

When you initiate a path trace, the Cisco DNA Center controller reviews and collects network topology and routing data from the discovered devices. It then uses this data to calculate a path between the two hosts or Layer 3 interfaces, and displays the path in a path trace topology. The topology includes the path direction and the devices along the path, including their IP addresses. The display also shows the protocol of the devices along the path (Switched, STP, ECMP, Routed, Trace Route) or other source type.

Perform a Path Trace

The path trace feature works in a similar manner in all the devices. You can perform a path trace from the Client 360 or Device 360 window.

Before you begin

Make sure that the devices (routers, switches, wireless controllers, and access points) are discovered. See Discover Your Network Using an IP Address Range, Discover Your Network Using CDP, or Discover Your Network Using LLDP.

Procedure

Step 1

From the Client 360 or Device 360 page, in the Path Trace category, click Run New Path Trace.

The Set Up Path Trace dialog box appears.

Step 2

Do one of the following:

  • Enter the source and destination information:

    Client Device—In the Source field, enter the IP address, host name, username, or application name from which you want the trace to start. In the Destination field, enter the IP address, host name, username, or application name at which you want the trace to end.

    Switch or Router—In the Source field, enter the IP address of the host from which you want the trace to start. In the Destination field, enter the IP address of the host at which you want the trace to end.

  • Enter the following 5-tuple values (source IP address and port number; destination IP address and port number; and the protocol in use):

    1. In the Source field, enter the IP address of the host from which you want the trace to start.

      Note 

      The IP address in the Source field is prepopulated; however, you can change this.

      In the Port (optional) field, under Source, enter the port number of the host from which you want the trace to start.

    2. In the Destination field, enter the IP address of the host or the Layer 3 forwarding interface at which you want the trace to end.

      In the Port (optional) field, under Destination, enter the port number of the host at which you want the trace to end.

    3. Click Show Options.

    4. From the Protocol drop-down list, choose either tcp or udp.

Step 3

Click Show Options, and then do the following, as required:

  1. (Optional) To configure the path trace topology to refresh every 30 seconds, click Refresh Every 30secs such that its status is On.

  2. (Optional) To display whether the devices have Access Control List (ACL) trace enabled, click ACL Trace such that its status is On.

    Note 

    By default, ACL Trace is On; however, you can change it to Off, if required.

  3. (Optional) To configure the path trace to collect additional statistics, click Include Stats such that its status is On. The following options are displayed. Check any of the check boxes, as needed:

    • Interface—Collects and displays information about the interfaces on the devices along the path.

    • Device—Collects and displays information, such as the device CPU and memory usage.

Step 4

Click Start Path Trace. The path trace topology appears.

This includes the path direction and the intermediate devices along the path, and their IP addresses. The display also shows the protocol of the devices along the path, Switched, STP, ECMP, Routed, Trace Route, or other source type.

In addition, you can also view the following information from the path trace topology:

  • ACL Enabled Devices—If ACL Trace is set to On, for the devices that have ACL enabled in them, the path trace topology displays a green check mark on top of the device; otherwise, the check mark is black.

  • Device Statistics—If Include Stats is set to On, click the devices in the path trace topology to display the appropriate device statistics.

  • Last Updated Time Stamp—The time stamp indicating when the path trace was last updated is displayed to the left of the topology.

  • Clients Per Device—The number of clients per device is displayed below each device in the path trace topology.

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