Top IP/Ethernet Conversations

The Top IP/Ethernet Conversations Chart provides a summary of the top Network layer conversations that took place within the time boundaries of a set of trace results. The summary is broken out into two sections that display summary data in different formats, as follows:

• Top 8 Conversations — this section provides a summary in bar chart and label format for the top 8 Network layer conversations in a trace that displays the IP addresses of the communicating computers and the number of messages exchanged in each conversation in bar chart format. A scale is also provided to the right of the bar chart that indicates the relative percent volume of messages for each conversation row with respect to the overall top 8 conversations message count.

• Top IP/Ethernet Conversations — this section provides message details in a column layout that is tailored to provide useful statistics for the top Network layer conversations that took place in a set of trace results. The data is sorted in descending order from the highest to lowest message count, per conversation. The layout contains the following data columns:

  • Network — contains the IP or Ethernet addresses of the computer nodes that exchanged messages.

  • Count — specifies the number of messages that were exchanged in each conversation.

  • Bytes — based on the payloadLength property of any module that defines this field, the values in this column specify the total payload byte volume of all messages (containing this property) that are associated with each Network conversation.

  • KBs — provides an indication of the data transmission rate in kilobytes-per-second for the messages in a conversation.

  • Duration — specifies the delta between the StartTime and EndTime values.

  • StartTime — specifies the time at which the first message in a conversation group began.

  • EndTime— specifies the time at which the last message in a conversation group ended.

  • BPS — provides an indication of the data transmission rate in bytes-per-second for the messages in a conversation.

  • K — a chart constant to facilitate calculation of the KBs values.

Using the Top IP/Ethernet Conversations Chart

To maximize analysis effectiveness, you should apply the Network Viewpoint to this chart, which removes all messages above the Network layer. When you apply this Viewpoint from the Viewpoint drop-down list on the toolbar of the Viewpoint Tool Window, the values in columns such as Count, Bytes, KBs, and BPS, will then be based on IP and Ethernet messages only. For example, the Count column will then indicate the number of IP or Ethernet messages in each conversation, while the Bytes column will indicate the number of IP or Ethernet payload bytes exchanged in each conversation.

Statistics that you can obtain from this chart that are useful in troubleshooting the Network layer include:

• Message volume per conversation

• Top bandwidth consumers

• Data transmission rates

• Time to complete conversations