Traffic Load BETA
Overview
Traffic charts display the total volume in (upper) and out (lower) for the selected time period.




This page describes the Beta version of the Traffic load chart, read about the Legacy version
Sidebar options and colour coding
- Click to reset all sidebar controls to their default value, appears faded if defaults currently in use
- Summary
- Unchecked by default, check to see the total values, peak and 95th percentages for in and out during the selected time period - see separate section for more details
- Percentage
- Selected by default, show data received or sent as a percentage of the bandwidth, Note: percentage is capped at 300%
- Actual
- Show volume of data received or sent
Percentage
With a week or month selected, choose the Standard or Min/Max Avg view
- Average
- Shows the average of all values received for each time period, uncheck to remove
- Min/Max
- Draws a vertical gradient bar for the minimum and maximum values recorded for the time period, uncheck to remove
Actual
With a week or month selected, choose the Standard or Min/Max Avg view
- Average
- Shows the average of all values received for each time period, uncheck to remove
- Min/Max
- Draws a vertical blue bar for the minimum and maximum values recorded for the time period, uncheck to remove
- Errors/Discards
- Checked by default, see errors associated with inbound traffic and discards associated with outbound traffic. See separate section for more details.
- CPU utilisation
- Checked by default, see CPU utilisation percentages as coloured blips. See separate section for more details.
- Data table
- Display text results for the current and preceding six time periods which can be shown in a Business Hours only view, see separate section for more details
- If you click, hold and drag across the chart to zoom in then this button appears in the top right of the chart - click to revert to the full time period, see separate section on zoom options for GIF examples


When viewed for today only, the sidebar for each section on the Details page gives an indication if it is currently impacting the associated heat tile colour. This applies for collapsed sections also.
Dormant watches are not expected to pass traffic so a small amount in or out (more than 1000 Kbps by default) changes the side bar colour. Find out more about alerting thresholds.
Saved settings
The settings below will be remembered when you next log in.
- Whether the panel is collapsed or expanded
- The status of all checkboxes, radio buttons and drop-down options
Traffic Load description
- Download the traffic information to a CSV file, see separate section on Download option below
- Vertical axis
- Changes from "% Load" when Percentage selected and "bps" when Actual selected - hover on the chart to see exact values. Note: scaling may adjust depending on the volume
-
80% - On the percentage chart only, the threshold is shown as a horizontal purple line on the chart with the actual threshold value on the far right.
The default threshold is 80% and Admin users can set a custom threshold. If configured, a load alert can be sent when the traffic load approaches the threshold.
If the adjusted vertical axis means the threshold line is not visible then a purple arrow is shown indicating the threshold is above the visible chart area. - Horizontal axis
- Adjusts according to the selected time period to show "hours" in day view and "days" in week and month views; redraws if the time zone is changed at the top right of the Details page
- Zoom options
- Drag: click, hold and drag across the chart to zoom into a time period; repeat if needed and if complete
Note: all new chart types are synchronised so they zoom in and out together
Click: on a week or month view, click on the chart to jump to that specific day view
See separate section on zoom options for GIF examples
Colour | Percentages | Meaning |
---|---|---|
300% | Percentages are capped at 300% | |
200% | ||
101% | Greater than the bandwidth of the line | |
100% | The configured or discovered bandwidth of the line | |
80% | By default, Highlight alerts at 80% | |
60% | ||
20% | ||
0% |
Highlight displays the load value for each data point in the time period:
- Day
- Shows multiple data points per hour (one for each polling period, usually one to five minutes)
- Week
- Shows 24 data points per day (every hour), if checked Average for each hour is shown along with Min/Max values
- Month
- Shows 6 data points per day (every 4 hours), if checked Average for each hour is shown along with Min/Max values

Day view and Week/Month view with "Standard" selected. Hover on a point to see date, timestamp and Max for In and Out as actual values and percentages. If selected, Errors/Discards and CPU are included.

Week/Month view with "Min/Max Avg" selected. Hover on a point to see date, timestamp, then Avg, Min and Max for In and Out as actual values and percentages of the bandwidth. If selected, Errors/Discards and CPU are included.
Summary
- Summary
- Unchecked by default, check to see the total values, peak and 95th percentages for in and out during the selected time period
The values shown change based on the selection of Percentage or Actual in the side bar.
Percentage values are coloured on the same gradient as the chart, from green meaning light load, to orange and red as the value approaches 100% of the bandwidth and deeper reds above 100%.
Actual values are blue to indicate neither good nor bad.

- Total
- Shows the accumulated volume of traffic for the time period displayed, calculated by adding the volumes from the polled samples. This value is the same with Percentage or Actual selected.
- Peak (Percentage)
- The bits per second values reported are taken from the individual sample with the highest percentage of the configured/discovered line speed for the time period displayed. It will be seen as the highest point on the chart.
Percentage can exceed 100% if bursting is permitted on the line or the line speed in Highlight is lower than the configured or discovered bandwidth. - Peak (Actual)
- The bits per second value reported is from the individual sample with the highest throughput for the time period displayed. It will be seen as the highest point on the chart. The Highlight peak therefore is the sample with the largest volume, divided by the number of seconds between samples (typically 180 or 60). Note: This may vary from the peak reported on a network device which would use a different measurement interval.
The peak bps figure may differ from the peak bps on the Percentage chart if the Highlight bandwidth has changed during the day. See Troubleshooting traffic load for more details. - 95th percentile
- The highest recorded value during the time period ignoring the top 5%, read more about the 95th percentile and why it's useful
- Last sample
- Only shown for today, this is the last recorded value (the last good sample) for today with ? shown if no data was received

Errors/Discards and CPU utilisation
Errors are inbound line errors (such as CRC and frame errors). Line errors are not available for Class of Service watches.
Discards are the outbound issue of packet loss.
Both are measured as a percentage of overall packets received (Errors) or sent (Discards). Hover on the chart to see timestamp and precise values. Colours on the line are:
Colour | Ignored | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Errors/Discards | Up to 0.10% | 0.11 to 0.50% | 0.51 to 1.00% | 1.01 to 2.50% | 2.51 to 5.00% | Greater than 5.00% |
Custom defined Alerting threshold: Bearers - Congestion & Errors
By default, line errors and discards greater than 1.00% will cause the heat tile to change colour and generate an alert if one has been set up. Admin users can set a custom threshold.
From the Traffic Load title bar you can download to a CSV file the errors and discards data from each poll, see separate "Download option" section for more details.
CPU utilisation is shown as a grey line if unavailable or a thicker green line up to 50%. Hover on the chart to see timestamp and precise values. Above 50% it's shown in coloured blips:
Colour | Grey line | Green line | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CPU util | 0% | Up to 50% | 51% to 65% | 66% to 80% | 81% to 95% | 96% to 100% |
Highlight does not change the colour of heat tiles nor send alerts for CPU utilisation.
Note: CPU utilisation may not be available, depending on the equipment manufacturer.
Zoom options
There are two methods to zoom in on charts: drag and click. All new style charts on the details page are synchronised so they zoom in and out together or the whole page jumps to a date on click.


Data table option
Data table shows text statistics for your selected period (day, week or month) and compares it with the previous six periods.

The columns for Traffic OUT and Traffic IN directions are:
- Volume
- the total volume of traffic that flowed in this direction over this period, in bytes
- Average
- average traffic level given as both a number of bits-per-second and as a percentage utilisation
- 95th Percentile
- traffic level calculated using 95th percentile, so discarding the highest 5% of samples and showing the highest remaining sample
- Peak
- the peak traffic or utilisation level seen on the circuit
- Availability
- the final column is for the overall circuit, learn more about how we display and calculate availability
Toggle between showing statistics taken across the entire 24-hour period, or just including business hours, using the tabs on the top right of the window. If you select business hours for a 'day' view, you may see empty statistics rows for weekends if these are outside the defined business hours. Learn more about business hours in Highlight
Note: Highlight calculates statistics for this panel at the end of each day, so on a 'day' view there will be no results for 'today' (the current day).
Download option
From the Traffic Load title bar you can download to a CSV file the traffic information which created the displayed charts.

The columns in the download are:
- Time
- the date and time of each sample (matching the time zone selected on the Details page)
- In
- the total bytes received since the previous sample
- Out
- the total bytes sent since the previous sample
- Util In
- the average speed of traffic calculated from the received bytes value during this time period, expressed as a percentage of the configured/discovered bandwidth In (see example below)
- Util Out
- the average speed of traffic calculated from the sent bytes value during this time period, expressed as a percentage of the configured/discovered bandwidth Out (see example below)
- Error
- the number of errors reported in this time period expressed as a percentage of the number of packets received
- Discards
- the number of discarded packets reported in this time period expressed as a percentage of the number of packets sent
For SD-WAN tunnels, disregard the columns Util In, Util Out, Error and Discards as the data is not returned
Utilisation example
If 491595485 bytes are received over a 3 minute period on a 50M line, the Utilisation is calculated as:
491595485 * 8 = 3,932,763,880 bits
/ 180 = 21,848,688 bits/sec
/ 1,000,000 = 21.85Mbps
/ 50M *100 = 43.7% utilisation
Utilisation note
The timespan used for calculations of utilisation can vary by a few seconds from the specific poll interval. This may be caused by a number of factors including:
- SNMP retries
- slow device responses
- resource contention on the poller
This variation is taken into account when Highlight calculates the utilisation which is presented on screen and in the Utilisation columns. This can lead to differences in utilisation calculations if attempts are made to reverse the calculation assuming a specific poll interval.