This article provides an overview of Kentik's ksynth-agent
synthetics agent.
Notes:
For a general explanation of synthetic monitoring in Kentik, see Synthetics.
For assistance with any aspect of the agent setup process, contact Kentik (see Customer Care).
About Synthetics Agent
Kentik is able to perform continuous synthetic performance testing from and to network locations both within your infrastructure and elsewhere around the Internet. These tests are enabled by Kentik’s ksynth-agent
software agent for synthetic monitoring.
Synthetics Agent Types
The ksynth-agent
software agent for synthetic testing includes the following modes, known as agent types:
Synthetics Agent Type | Description |
---|---|
App |
|
Network | Supports network tests only (ping, traceroute, HTTP, DNS) |
Synthetics Agent Deployments
Kentik's synthetic testing agent is used in the following types of deployments:
Global Agents: Available to every customer that has activated our synthetic monitoring services, "global agents" are the agents in the Kentik Global Agent Network, a worldwide network of Kentik-maintained
ksynth
agents. Hosted in data centers and public clouds, these agents enable performance testing to and from key Internet hubs worldwide.Note: In some portal contexts, the subset of global agents that is deployed in the infrastructure of key cloud service providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI, etc.) is referred to separately as "Public Cloud" agents.
Private Agents: Every Kentik customer can deploy as many
ksynth-agent
instances as they care to in their own on-prem and/or cloud infrastructure (no additional license required). These private agents are for the exclusive use of the customer who deploys them (not available to other Kentik customers).
Deployment Considerations
The following considerations apply when deploying ksynth-agent
.
ksynth-agent
Protocols
ksynth-agent
uses the following protocols:
For communication between
ksynth-agent
and Kentik's SaaS platform (US or EU):TCP 443 (HTTPS)
For network tests (IPv4 and/or IPv6):
Ping: ICMP or TCP (with option to specify target port)
Traceroute: UDP or TCP (with option to specific target port)
ICMP Echo ping
For HTTP(s) or API Tests:
HTTP GET/ POST/ PUT/ PATCH sent to TCP port 80/443
Allowing ksynth-agent
When running one or more ksynth-agent
instances on your network, the domains in the table below should be allowed in your firewall rules to ensure that the agents can communicate with Kentik.
US domains | EU Domains |
---|---|
api.kentik.com | api.kentik.eu |
flow.kentik.com | flow.kentik.eu |
grpc.api.kentik.com | grpc.api.kentik.eu |
portal.kentik.com | portal.kentik.eu |
storage.googleapis.com | storage.googleapis.com |
whoami.kentiklabs.com | whoami.kentiklabs.com |
NTP Configuration
The server on which ksynth-agent
is installed must be configured as an NTP client to avoid known issues related to clock skew. If the NTP service is correctly configured, the following command should return successfully:
sudo ntpq -p
ksynth-agent
Security
The ksynth-agent
agent generates a unique identity and uses this to authenticate with the Kentik platform. The identity is stored in a local file to be used across restarts and upgrades.