Introduction
ThousandEyes Endpoint Agents for RoomOS devices was released on August 15th of 2023 as you can see in the ThousandEyes changelog. The configuration is straightforward and it takes a few minutes to get the agent activated and registered.
The documentation guides you through the configuration of the integration. Notice that a connection string is used to bind the Endpoint Agent from the RoomOS device to ThousandEyes organization. This connection string is used in the agent registration process.
On the Webex Control Hub side, you will have to plan which configuration you wish to use. You can only enable the ThousandEyes agent at the global level or for the individual device. If you enable it for the device, none of the other devices will have get the agent enabled. If you choose the global settings, all devices will have the ThousandEyes enabled and will be mapped to the same ThousandEyes organization. As of now, there is only a 1:1 mapping between a Control Hub and ThousandEyes organizations. We recommend to visit the integration page for this feature.
In this post you will find the steps after configuring your ThousandEyes Control Hub integration, to verify the integration workflow and understand how to use this feature to troubleshoot network problems. We recommend to watch the video on the ThousandEyes Webex RoomOS demo page to get an idea of the integration workflow from beginning to end.
In order to test this the integration, you can create a Automatic Session Test for Webex in ThousandEyes and assign it to the Endpoint Agent in the Room OS device registered. The AST (Automatic Session Test) will automatically detect the traffic generated by the Webex call and start providing metrics such as latency, jitter and latency. To start seeing network metrics, you can start a Webex call and have the Room OS device join the call. Please visit the automated session tests section in our documentation for more information on how to configure ASTs for Webex and assign an endpoint agent to run this test.
Prerequisites
- You have finished the configuration for the ThousandEyes Control Hub integration.
- You should have configured an AST test and assigned it to the Endpoint Agent installed in the Room OS device in the ThousandEyes platform.
Steps to test the integration
Step 1. Create and join a Webex call.
Step 2. Call the meeting with the Room OS device.
Step 3. Review the network path for the device in the meeting from Control Hub.
Step 4. Review the path visualization from the ThousandEyes platform.
Steps to test the integration in detail
Step 1. Create and join a Webex call.
You can start or schedule a call from the Webex web, mobile or desktop application. More information on how to schedule a Webex call can be found in the Webex Help Center.
Once the Webex meeting is started, copy the video address of the meeting, this information is needed to call the meeting from the Room OS device. The video address for the meeting can be found in the meeting info or in the calendar invite in case of a scheduled meeting.
As shown in the image above, the meeting info menu is available at the top right hand corner of the Webex meeting.
For more information on joining a Webex meeting from a video system, please see Join a Webex meeting, webinar, or event from a video system.
Step 2. Call the meeting with the Room OS device.
Once you are ready to join the meeting from the RoomOS device, call the Webex meeting using the video address. If you are remote to the device you can login to the Local Device Controls for the device and call from there.
For information on how to set the local user administration on Room devices see Local User Administration on Desk, Board, and Room devices.
Step 3. Review the network path for the device in the meeting from Control Hub.
When the RoomOS device joins the Webex Meeting, the ThousandEyes Endpoint agent enabled on it will start collecting and sending the network data relevant to the tests running for this agent. In this case, the Automated Session Test configured prior to testing the integration, automatically detects the Webex meeting traffic and starts collecting network information. With this information the ThousandEyes platform presents a path visualization view that can be used for troubleshooting.
Go to Control hub in order to see the section Network Path quality section, this new component in the metric's graph is available only to those RoomOS devices with the ThousandEyes agent installed and configured with a test.
Navigate to the Troubleshooting section and then select live meetings for your ongoing Webex meeting or the option meetings & calls if you are looking for calls that have occurred in the past. In that case, you can search by meeting ID, device name, etc.
In the image above you can see the Webex Control Hub dashboard after clicking on the Live meeting and then the RoomOS device.
Click on any part of the line corresponding to Network Path in order to see the end-to-end path between the RoomOS ThousandEyes agent and the Webex server hosting the meeting and all the network nodes in between responding to the tests.
Click on the agent to see network metrics such as loss, latency, jitter and location for the specific point in time that you selected. If you click on a node in the path, you will be able to see the prefix, latency, location and the network the network device belongs to.
Network Path Quality View from the ThousandEyes Endpoint Agent.
Step 4. Review the path visualization from the ThousandEyes platform.
Login to the ThousandEyes platform account where the agent is registered to.
In the Endpoint Agent views, you will find three different views, select Automated Session Tests in order to see the Path visualization from the data collected by the Endpoint Agent in the Desk Pro device that was used to join the Webex meeting in the steps before.
Notice that you can select between network, system and VPN metrics in the drop down. While troubleshooting a network problem, you can select a specific point in time and review the network metrics end-to-end as well as in each of the discovered nodes in the path. This will help you focus the troubleshooting efforts based on the information collected by the ThousandEyes Endpoint Agent.