NetAuditor^® Report Type: Activity Summary

Reports

View Sample

There are four types of Activity Summary reports. They are:

• Activity Summary by Category
• Activity Summary by Domain
• Activity Summary by Protocol
• Activity Summary by User

Report Sections

Header

In the header of this report you will see the device name, the date range of the report and the total number of accesses.

• Accesses/Total Accesses: An access is defined as one Get Request for HTTP, one Connection for HTTPS, one file for FTP, one login or group change for NNTP. For CHAT/P2P/VOIP/Streaming Media it depends on our individual signature for that protocol which maybe the login, connection, or file. Total accesses is the sum of all accesses for all supported protocols.

Top (X) Categories

This shows the top (x) categories for all accesses during the date range of the report. You can see the entire listing of categories that we currently support , along with complete definitions of what belongs in each category here.

• Percent of Accesses: Percentage of the total number of accesses.
• Accesses: See above definition for accesses.
• Percent Blocked: Percentage of accesses that were blocked. (NetSpective reporting only)
• Volume: Total amount of data transferred. (Firewall/Proxy Server reporting only)
• Unique Users: The number of users that accessed sites in each category. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)
• Unique Domains: The number of domains that were accesses in each category. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)

Top (X) Domains

This shows the top (x) domains for all accesses during the date range of the report. Domain names provide symbolic representations of IP addresses so that you do not have to use the numerical designation.

• Percent of Accesses: Percentage of the total number of accesses.
• Accesses: See above definition for accesses.
• Percent Blocked: Percentage of accesses that were blocked. (NetSpective reporting only)
• Unique Users: The number of users that accessed the domain. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)
• Sessions/Minutes: Estimate of surfing time of HTTP and HTTPS traffic based on user defined settings for Browser Session Timeout (in minutes) and Smallest Browser Session (in minutes). See below for details about these settings.
• Volume: Total amount of data transferred. (Firewall/Proxy Server reporting only)

Top (X) Protocols

This shows the top (x) protocols for all accesses during the date range of the report.

• Percent of Accesses: Percentage of the total number of accesses.
• Accesses: See above definition for accesses.
• Percent Blocked: Percentage of accesses that were blocked. (NetSpective reporting only)
• Unique Users: The number of users that accessed sites in each category. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)
• Unique Domains: The number of domains that were accesses in each category. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)

Top (X) Users

This shows the top (X) users for all accesses during the date range of the report.

• Percent of Accesses: Percentage of the total number of accesses.
• Accesses: See above definition for accesses.
• Percent Blocked: Percentage of accesses that were blocked. (NetSpective reporting only)
• Volume: Total amount of data transferred. (Firewall/Proxy Server reporting only)
• Unique Domains: The number of domains that were accesses in each category. (Not displayed on drilldown pages.)

Settings Effecting Sessions/Minutes

Browser Session Timeout

This setting tells NetAuditor how much inactivity to allow before closing a browsing session to start a new one. For instance, if a user generates a steady stream of HTTP traffic for 10 minutes, stops for 7 minutes, and then starts again for another 10 minutes, should that be seen as one browser session for 27 minutes, or two separate 10-minute browsing sessions that are 7 minutes apart? The user may have stopped browsing for 7 minutes, or he may have spent that time reading a web page or composing a web email. It is up to you to choose a timeout value that you feel gives the best results.

Smallest Browser Session

This setting tells NetAuditor to ignore sessions that are too short to be worth mentioning. This helps eliminate some of the "noise" mentioned above. If you have an RSS reader that generates a spike of traffic once every 30 minutes, but that spike only lasts for a minute or two, then setting this to 3 should eliminate that traffic. By itself, this setting does not remove very much of the unwanted noise. However, it works quite well when combined with the noise reduction setting below.