Location Update notification frequency per device

[rgibson117]

Hello,

I'm experimenting with the Northbound Notification and am actively receiving POSTs from the CMX server, but a single device will only send a location sample once every 10 minutes.  I see this both by using "Location Update" or "Movement > 10 feet".  Is there a way to increase this frequency?  In a perfect world I'd like an update for each device every 5-10 seconds, but can live with a little bit longer.  10 minute intervals make it almost impossible to analyze any sort of path especially if the visit is less than 10 minutes.  Is this configurable and where would I find the option?

Thank you,

Ray

[matfarre]

Hi Ray,

The notifications are sent immediately upon being triggered by a location update event which meets all of the notification conditions.  These notifications are a superset of the location update events.  The notifications are a real-time stream of all the activity for all clients to a destination.  Some of these notification may be dropped due to congestion or exceeding queue size.  The Notification dropped rate will show how many notifications are rejected per second.  The count, percentage, and rate/second can be observed from the CMX UI under Manage --> Notifications and click on Details for Action under the particular Notification name.

However, if the success rate/second is lower for this particular device only, the problem is most likely due to RSSI signal strength or lack of continuous probing.  These parameters are settable in the CMX UI under System --> Dashboard, click on gear logo on the System at a Glance window, then Filtering.  The default settings are normally optimum for most deployments.

Back to the question regarding notification frequency, there is not a setting for increasing (or decreasing/batching) notifications on devices meeting the conditions of the notification.  Please let us know if you discover the cause of the infrequent triggering of the device under question.

Thanks for the question,

Matt

[rgibson117]

Matt,

Thank you for the quick reply. The version of the server is 10.2.2-340 and doesn't have a "details" button on the notification page.  Perhaps I need to convince them to update it first.  The Filtering box is set to defaults it seems with a probe threshold of -85.  In the alerts area it did say earlier "Location service is Overloaded.  Nmsplb sending: 409 Location processing: 109" -- unsure what that means exactly but maybe the server can't push these out fast enough?  I know the Cassandra backend is pretty slow and practically unqueryable through the API but I was told the Northbound notifications are very light on the system.

For a two hour period (in "location update" mode) I received approximately 5000 devices once, 1300 devices twice, 400 devices three times, 100 devices four times, 30 devices five times, and 1 device six times and seven times.  Comparing the "lastSeen" values for any of these I never see a difference of less than 10 minutes, though often higher.

I will try to get the system updated, but if you think of any other potential causes please let me know.  Thank you,

Ray

[matfarre]

Hi,

Thanks for the additional info, I will pass it on to the CMX folks for advise.

There is another way to see the success rate on CMX:

CLI command

     $ cmxctl metrics notification

CMX 10.3 will be available soon.

Matt

[rgibson117]

Matt,

Running that command produces "No installation was found, please install CMX".  Would it require sudo or is this a sign of something else?  I am relaying it to someone who has console access as I do not directly.  Thanks,

Ray

[Danny De Ridder]

Hello,

the above error would show up when the metrics is not installed?

The configuration file shows what's installed.

[cmxadmin@cmx etc]$ cd $MSE_HOME/etc/

[cmxadmin@cmx etc]$  cat node.conf  | grep -A5 metrics

[metrics]

port = 25826

enabled = yes

available = yes

I assume in your setup it would show something else.

[cmxadmin@cmx etc]$ cmxctl --help

Usage: cmxctl [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:

  -v, --verbose  Verbose output.

  -q, --quiet    Suppress all output.

  --help         Show this message and exit.

Commands:

  checklogs   check the logs and generate a report

  config      Configure CMX.

  debug       Create a debug tarball in the current dir.

  diag        Diagnostics for CMX

  disable     Disable an enabled service.

  dump        Create a config tarball in the current dir.

  enable      Enable a disabled service.

  heterarchy  Verify/repair/retire heterarchy.

  jobs        Configure recurring background jobs.

  leave       Leave the cmx cluster.

  metrics     metrics for cmx

  node        Manage SSL.

  reset       Reset CMX Password.

  restart     Restart services.

  stack       generate the jstack for a java service

  start       Start services.

  status      Displays the status for one or all services.

  stop        Shut down services.

  users       Configure cmx users through the cli.

  version     Print CMX version info and exit.

[cmxadmin@cmx etc]$

Regards,

Danny.

[matfarre]

Hi,

Also, please see Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Command Reference Guide, Release 10.2 - Cisco for the latest version of the CLI commands.

Thanks,

Matt