Need for an agent on user device:
The world is hybrid, where employees work from cafes, libraries, remote work location, offices etc. where businesses need to support low latency and high bandwidth applications that are hosted on cloud, and where strategies to implement a seamless 'Digital Experience' for end-users has taken over the boardroom discussions. In this hybrid world, having a solution that enables IT administrators and network operators to have visibility into how users see the network is more important than ever.
UXI Agent for Android devices:
The UXI Agent for Android devices is a software that runs on end user devices and provides the visibility into how user’s sees the network i.e., user’s digital experience.
Useful Information provided by the agent as of today:
Wi-fi experience – not only collects detailed wi-fi metrics like signal (RSSI), Tx and Rx bitrate, BSSID, band, channel but also shows a wi-fi visualization chart with information like channel overlap, SSIDs, channel, width, signal of nearby APs. This helps admins to visualize signal strength and interference at end-user’s end.
App experience – can be used to test mission critical apps both internal and external to your environment. The agent gives useful information like DNS lookup time, HTTP Get Elapsed time, packet loss, latency, jitter, gateway reachability etc.
Back in time troubleshooting - provides back-in-time triage so that network admin can validate network changes and see historical values for root-cause-analysis.
Device Information - analyses the host device and capture information like: Persistent Device Identifier (PID), serial number, IP address, primary/secondary DNS, battery percentage, temperature, location etc. This can help admins to know the location of the user, device connectivity and battery health of the user device.
Location information can be turned off on request.
Data push destination - enables IT teams to export data and correlate the client view with other sources of data to identify any discrepancies and further decision making.
User self-service portal - highlights network and device details that are usually requested by IT teams for rapid troubleshooting. The details displayed includes, phone being connected to network or not, SSID name, phone name, UXI dashboard connectivity, UXI services connectivity, Permissions info, Agent version, etc.
Future Consideration - we plan to add capabilities like roaming experience, enhance device information in the future releases.
Installation , Configuration and Subscription :
UXI Agent can be installed on android devices from Google Play MDM, or can be installed from HPE Networking Support Portal. Please refer this if using the support portal.
The agent connects to cloud hosted dashboard as soon as it is configured. The agent is configured by scanning a QR code or using managed configurations from the MDM.
A subscription is required from UXI for the dashboard to work. Subscriptions are enforced on the dashboard not on the agent.
The platform supported today includes android 8 and above.
Note: UXI is a vendor neutral platform and works with any infrastructure provider.
Agent in action:
Once the agent is started, the agent will appear on your UXI dashboard and begin reporting test results in 10 to 15 minutes.
The UXI Agent runs in the background on the device and runs low impact synthetic tests to measure what the end-user experience is like from the perspective of the handheld.
The agent will only test the network that are defined in the "Wireless" list on UXI cloud. You don't need to assign a network to the agent, when a agent connects to a network in the list it starts testing the network.
The SSID name is the only mandatory field required to define a network for the agent to test it.
You do not need to assign a network to the agent. Whenever the device connects to a network defined in the "Wireless" list, the agent will automatically begin testing the network and report the results to the UXI cloud dashboard.
Example Scenario:
Previously, the agent automatically tested the user's home network and reported the results. Moving forward, this automatic testing will cease unless the user's home network, at the very least its SSID, is defined in the "Wireless" network list on the UXI dashboard.
The agent can only test the network that it is connected to. You cannot change the network settings like you do for a hardware sensor.
Synthetic Tests
The test cycle runs every 5 minutes and performs the following tests:
AP Scan
Gateway reachability
DNS check (a check to see if the agent can resolve cdn.capenetworks.io)
HTTP GET
PING
You can assign the agents to groups and then assign test to groups and networks.
If the agent doesn't support an assigned test, the agent will skip it.
Useful Links: