Test Credits

This article describes the test credits used for Synthetics testing in Kentik.

About Test Credits

Synthetic testing in Kentik is enabled by "test credits," which are purchased from Kentik in SyntheticPaks. The purchased credits add to your organization's test credit balance. Every time a test is run this balance is reduced by an amount that is calculated based on the factors explained in Test Credit Consumption.

The results of these calculations are continually updated and displayed in the portal UI (see Test Credit Display) so you always know how many credits you have to work with and what the impact of any added testing would be on your test credit balance.

Adding Test Credits

If your organization's test credit balance drops below zero a notification will appear on some of the pages in the Synthetics section of the Kentik portal. Your currently running tests will not be paused or deleted, and your organization will not be automatically charged. You will, however, be unable to resume paused tests, add new tests, or edit any existing tests in a way that increases credit consumption.

To remove these limitations, click the submit a request link in the notification to open a dialog pre-populated with the information Kentik needs to process your request (see Customer Care).

Test Credit Display

Your organization's test credit balance is displayed in various places in the portal’s Synthetics section, as is the impact on your credit balance of consumption by individual tests:

• Licenses Page: The Synthetics pane shows credits used so far this month as a percent of available credits. It also shows a count of credits used and credits available.

• Synthetics Dashboard: The Credit Utilization pane/widget shows total counts of credits available, credits used so far this month, and credits remaining for the month.

• Tests Page: Click Credit Utilization in the subnav to display your total current and projected credit utilization.

  Tip: In the Tests list, enable the % Monthly Credits column (hidden by default) to display each test’s consumption this month as a percent of your organization’s total available credits.

• Test Settings: From an individual test result page, click Settings » Edit Test to view the settings page for the test.

  • The Monthly Credit Usage Estimate chart in the bottom left corner shows the credits the test will consume per month and how many will remain.

  • For more a detailed breakdown of a test’s point usage, click [#] credit(s) per min.

    

Test Credit Consumption

While the per-credit pricing of a SyntheticPak may vary depending on factors such as your Kentik platform (Pro or Premiere) and the number of credits in the SyntheticPak, the consumption of test credits in your organization varies by the type of test.

Notes:

• A Test Preview does not consume any monthly synthetic credits until the test is saved. The Credit usage statement at the top right corner of the Preview screen informs you of how many credits the test would consume if saved with those settings.

• For more a detailed breakdown of a test’s point usage, use the Credit Utilization button on the test's Test Settings page.

BGP Monitor Consumption

The BGP monitor test is not run using agents and its frequency is fixed at one minute. Kentik charges 0.53 credits for every minute that the test is configured and running.

Network Tests Consumption

Test credit consumption by a given network test (ping and traceroute) is always based on the following factors:

• The number of subtests (see Tests and Subtests).

• The type of the agent from which each subtest originates (see About Synthetics Agent):

  • Global: 5 credits per subtest (one direction).

  • Private: 2.5 credits per subtest (one direction).

• The testing interval (see Test Information Tab).

• The testing duration. Once turned on, tests typically run continuously, so in a full 30-day month a test that is executed every minute will run 43,200 times (60 minutes × 24 hours × 30 days).

HTTP Tests Consumption

Credits consumption in some HTTP tests (Page Load tests and HTTP(S) or API tests only) involve a timeout factor in which the timeout in seconds (see HTTP Settings Tab) is multiplied by 0.5 for private agents or 1 for global agents to arrive at the credits per subtest. With the default timeout of 5 seconds, for example, the credits for a private agent subtest would be 2.5 (5 × 0.5), which is equivalent to the "network" tests described above.

When used in conjunction with network testing (ping and traceroute), the credit consumption for network testing is added to that of the HTTP test. For example, if you’re testing two private agents against one target with HTTP and network testing, the breakdown would be as shown in the dialog pictured below.

Note: The point usage breakdown shown above is available for each test in the Monthly Credits Usage Estimate on the test's settings page.

Credit Consumption Scenarios

To better understand how testing impacts your organization's test credit balance, let's apply the factors described in Test Credit Consumption to a couple of example scenarios. The first example is a simple mesh test (see Test Types Reference) executed every minute between four private agents within your network. In this mesh, the four “from” agents would each test toward the other three target agents, for a total of 12 unidirectional subtests. The following table shows the test credit consumption over one month for those subtests.

The calculation gets more complicated when considering tests involving different kinds of source agents. In the table below, for example, we see a test involving a mesh of five agents (two private and three global) which results in a total of 20 unidirectional subtests, executed every minute.

Note: The above calculations are for illustration only. In actual practice all calculations are performed by the portal automatically and results are displayed as described in Test Credit Display.