How Does Kentik Determine Device Up/Down Status?

What determines a device's Up/Down status?

Kentik NMS determines device Up/Down status using SNMP reachability checks performed by the Kentik Universal Agent NMS Capability. The agent continuously polls the device and reports its availability status to the Kentik platform, where it is displayed in the portal.

How It Works

1. SNMP Reachability Check: The Kentik NMS agent runs a background process that queries the device's SNMP sysObjectID OID once every 20 seconds.

2. Down Detection: If the agent has not received a response from the device for more than 60 seconds (i.e., three consecutive missed responses), the device is declared Down. When a device is marked Down, all metric reports for that device are paused except for the /system report.

3. Status Reporting: The /system report extracts the Up/Down status from the agent's internal state as the online metric and sends it to Kentik. This report runs approximately once per minute, though the interval may vary depending on the device's polling configuration.

4. Portal Display: The following elements are then displayed on the Device's Details page:

   • The Up/Down/Unknown indicator (shown in the upper-left corner) is derived from the /system report using the online metric.
   • The Reachability timeline (shown in the upper-right corner) is derived from the /system report using the available metric.