---
title: "What Determines a Device's Up/Down Status?"
slug: "how-does-kentik-determine-device-up-down-status"
updated: 2026-07-15T17:18:38Z
published: 2026-07-15T17:18:38Z
canonical: "kb.kentik.com/how-does-kentik-determine-device-up-down-status"
stale: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kb.kentik.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# 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](https://kb.kentik.com/v1/docs/kentik-nms-configuration). 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.

## Related

- [Kentik NMS Configuration](/kentik-nms-configuration.md)