The Network Operations Center provides aggregated insight in a network operated with The Things Stack.
The Network Operations Center stores events from The Things Stack in a time series database, queries aggregated data and visualizes data in a dashboard driven by Grafana. The Network Operations Center is complementary to the Console: the Network Operations Center shows historic data (with a delay of at most 5 minutes), while the Console shows live information and allows for managing the network.
The Network Operations Center has two tiers - extended, and normal. The extended Network Operations Center shows statistics for Gateways, Applications, and End Devices. Non-extended users can only access Gateway statistics. Contact billing for information about accessing the Network Operations Center.
Accessing Network Operations Center
The Network Operations Center can only be accessed by administrators. There are two main ways to access Network Operations Center within The Things Stack Console:
- On the left hand menu click Network Operations Center.
- Click on your avatar/profile in the upper right corner and then choose the Network Operations Center from the drop-down menu.
The Network Operations Center Overview dashboard will open in a new web browser tab.
Note:
Since it utilizes Grafana, the Network Operations Center is supported in the current version of the following web browsers.A dashboard offers many features such as time picker, alerting, etc. For more information see the Grafana docs. Each dashboard has several panels for data visualization.
Overview Dashboard
The Overview dashboard provides a high-level overview of the network, focusing on the historical data for gateway, application, and device statistics for extended users. Non-extended users see only gateway statistics.
Gateway Overview
The gateway overview consists of the following panels:
Gateways connected - a bar chart that visualizes the number of gateways that have connected to the network in the selected period.
Gateway connectivity - a table layout that displays the Gateway ID, Last connect, Last disconnect, Disconnects, Uptime, and Packet rate of all the gateways on the network in the selected period.
The following is a brief description of each column in the table:
- Gateway ID: displays gateway IDs of all the gateways on the network. Click on the Gateway ID to access its Gateway Details Dashboard.
- Last connect: the date and time when the gateway last connected to the Network Server.
- Last disconnect: the date and time when the gateway last disconnected from the Network Server.
- Disconnects: the number of disconnects in the selected period.
- Uptime: the fraction of time in which the gateway has been connected to the Network Server.
- Packet rate: the total number of uplink and downlink data packets forwarded by the gateway per second.
The data can be sorted by column names and filtered by column values.
Application Overview
The application overview consists of the following panels:
Applications active - a bar chart that visualizes the number of applications with a device that has been activated in the network in the selected period, either in the last hour, week, or day.
Application statistics - a table layout that displays the Application ID, Active devices, and Average packet error rate of all the applications on the network in the selected period.
The following is a brief description of each column in the table:
- Application ID: displays application IDs of all the applications on the network.
- Active devices: displays the number of devices in the application which have sent an uplink message in the last hour.
- Average packet error rate: displays the average of the last packet error rate, over all of the end devices in an application as a percentage.
End Device Overview
The end device overview consists of the following panels:
End devices active - a bar chart that visualizes the number of devices that have connected to the network (uplinked) in the selected period, either in the last hour, week, or day.
End device statistics - a table layout that displays the Device ID, Application ID, Last seen, and Last packet error rate of all the devices on the network in the selected period.
The following is a brief description of each column in the table:
- Device ID: displays IDs of all the end devices on the network.
- Application ID: displays the application ID for each device.
- Last seen: displays when the device last uplinked.
- Last packet error rate: displays the ratio between the number of missing frames and the total number of frames over an hour as a percentage.
Gateway Details Dashboard
The Gateway Details dashboard visualizes detailed insight into gateway statistics in the selected time period.
It consists of the following panels:
Uptime - a gauge chart that visualizes the amount of time the gateway has been connected to the Network Server, represented as a percentage.
Lowest RSSI (LoRa) - a graph that visualizes data about the lowest Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) in dBm for each channel.
Traffic - a time series graph that visualizes the uplink and downlink rates in packets per second.
Packets per channel - a heat map that visualizes the number of uplink data packets for each channel.
Channel utilization - a graph that visualizes the percentage of total utilization on each channel over a time interval. For example, if we have sent 60 seconds of uplinks in a time period of 15 minutes, we have 60 / (15 * 60) = ~1.66% utilization.
The Packets per channel and Channel utilization graphs can be used to find out which channels are overused and which channels are prone to collisions.
Packets per data rate - a time series graph that visualizes the number of uplinks at each data rate.
Application Details Dashboard
The Application Details dashboard provides a detailed insight into application statistics in the selected time period.
It consists of the following panels:
Gateways seen - a chart which displays the number of packets received by each gateway and the channel they primarily use.
Device statistics - a chart displaying gateway, RSSI, and packet data for each device in the application.
Packets per data rate - a time series graph that visualizes the number of uplinks at each data rate.
Packets per channel - a heat map that visualizes the number of uplink data packets for each channel.
End Device Details Dashboard
The End Device Details dashboard provides a detailed insight into end device statistics in the selected time period.
It consists of the following panels:
Last seen - when the device last uplinked.
Session age - how long since the device last negotiated new keys.
Best RSSI (LoRa) - a chart displaying the RSSI for each channel.
Packet error rate - a chart displaying the historical average error rate.
Channel utilization - a chart displaying the percentage of channel utilization.
Packets per data rate - a time series graph that visualizes the number of uplinks at each data rate.
Packets per channel - a heat map that visualizes the number of uplink data packets for each channel.
