MetricSplit › WAN monitoring
WAN monitoring that ends in a decision
WAN monitoring tells you how busy each circuit is. The harder question is what to do about it: move traffic to another circuit, limit some applications, pay for a smaller plan, or upgrade. MetricSplit monitors every WAN circuit from your routers' flow data and gives each one a decision with the evidence: rebalance, right-size, restrict or upgrade.
What MetricSplit measures on each WAN circuit
- How full it runs at its busiest business-hours moments. Each circuit is measured in 5-minute readings, per direction, in the site's own business hours. The figure that sets its state is the 95th percentile of the last 7 days, so one short spike doesn't decide anything and a quiet night doesn't hide a busy afternoon.
- Download and upload separately. A circuit can be full on download and half empty on upload. You see which way the bottleneck runs.
- What the traffic is. Every circuit's traffic is classified as business, neutral (updates, backups, sign-in) or non-business, such as streaming and social media, by application and by site.
- Whether the site survives losing a circuit. For every site with two circuits, MetricSplit checks whether the remaining circuit could carry the whole site at its busiest moment.
From a graph to a decision
Each circuit gets a state: Needs action above 85%, Approaching from 60 to 85%, Healthy below that, and Almost unused under 1%. Then MetricSplit checks the cheapest fix first:
- Rebalance when another circuit at the same site has room. No purchase needed.
- Restrict when non-business applications take enough room that limiting them would bring the circuit back under the line. You see how much room it would free before anyone writes a policy.
- Right-size when a circuit carries almost nothing. Check the flow export first, then price a smaller plan.
- Upgrade only when rebalancing and limiting apps can't bring the circuit under 85%, or when even a rebalanced site would still run above 60%.
Once you've entered your circuit prices, each decision shows its cost. Limiting non-business traffic doesn't lower the bill on its own: it frees room, and that room is worth money when it avoids an upgrade or lets you move to a smaller plan.
What you need
A flow export (NetFlow v9 or IPFIX) from each router or SD-WAN controller, pointed at MetricSplit. No agent, nothing in the traffic path. Supported today: Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. See the setup guides for other vendors.
Questions about WAN monitoring
What is WAN monitoring?
WAN monitoring is measuring the circuits that connect your sites to each other and to the internet: how much traffic each carries, in which direction, at which times, and what that traffic is. It is how you know whether a circuit is too small, too big or carrying the wrong traffic.
How is WAN monitoring different from internet speed tests?
A speed test measures what one device can get at one moment. WAN monitoring measures what the whole site actually uses, continuously, per circuit and per direction, so you can see the busy moments a speed test never catches.
Do I need SNMP for WAN monitoring?
Not with MetricSplit. It works from flow records (NetFlow v9 or IPFIX), which carry both the volume and what the traffic is. Interface counters alone tell you how busy a circuit was, not why.
How long before WAN monitoring gives useful results?
First findings arrive within days. Verdicts are marked provisional until a circuit has 30 days of data, so you always know how firm a verdict is.
See every circuit's decision on your own traffic
MetricSplit receives flow records (metadata only, no packet contents) and is never in your traffic path. A full security pack is available on request.