Hostname Visibility
Hostname Visibility is a Traffic Analytics feature. Enabling Hostname Visibility will allow you to view statistics about specific hostnames and IP addresses that are visited by clients on your network. You can view these statistics for your entire network and per-client. This type of information can be useful for understanding the types of traffic flowing over your network and constructing traffic policies to meet the needs of your Organization.
Enabling Hostname Visibility
To enable Hostname Visibility on a combined network:
- Navigate to Network-wide > Configure > General.
- Select "Detailed: collect destination hostnames" from the Traffic analysis drop-down menu located in the Traffic analysis section as seen below.
- Click Save Changes.
Note: The data displayed for traffic analytics is only collected after this feature is enabled. Data prior to that point will not be available with the exception of pre-existing traffic flows, including those established for Meraki Cloud Communication; there may be a noticeable spike in reported traffic volume initially as data for existing flows is collected, the initial traffic values may not reflect actual traffic values for this reason.
Once enabled, it may take up to 24 hours for information to propagate fully.
To enable Hostname Visibility on an uncombined network:
- Navigate to Network-wide > Configure > General.
- Select "Traffic analysis enabled" from the Traffic analysis drop-down menu located in the Traffic analysis section as seen below.
- Select “Report specific hostnames” from the Hostname visibility drop-down menu.
- Click Save Changes.
Hostname Visibility Statistics
Hostname statistics can be viewed for your entire network or for individual clients.
Network Statistics
To view statistics for the entire network, navigate to Network-wide > Monitor > Traffic analytics. This view becomes available once Hostname Visibility is enabled for your network. The main Traffic Analytics page, as seen below, provides information and traffic statistics for the applications and Internet destinations used by clients on your network. You can see statistics about the specific applications used, transport protocol information, destination hostname or IP address, usage data, amount of traffic sent and received, number of flows, and number of clients.
This page aggregates all of the detected applications for a given time frame. This time frame can be selected at the top of the page and options for weekly, daily, and monthly are available. Custom pie charts can also be configured to further customize the data based on HTTP hostname, IP, Port range, etc. This is configured under Alerts & Administration.
Note: The Traffic analytics table will exclude applications and destinations that account for less than 0.1% of the total network traffic. If it is desired to get information for such traffic, consider utilizing the getNetworkTraffic API endpoint.
You can learn more about a particular traffic type by clicking on the Application. This view will display information about about the ports used, the clients and usage statistics that have contributed traffic toward the rule, and particular hosts that have contributed to the rule. This details page can be seen below.
Network-wide Applications Details
Network-wide Applications statistics can also be viewed from the Network-wide > Monitor > Clients list by expand the "More" hyperlink under the Applications pie chart. Selecting a specific Application will redirect to the Rule Details page as seen above.
In a combined network, due to how clients are tracked, opening specific Application details in a new browser tab might redirect to an incorrect network type. Use the same tab to ensure accurate application details statistics are displayed.
Client Statistics
To view statistics for a particular client, Navigate to Network-wide > Monitor > Clients. Click on the client to open the Client Details page. This page features information about the applications, ports, and content viewed by a particular client. When Hostname Visibility has been enabled, you can view the specific destinations visited by clients. This is shown in the image below. You can see statistics about the specific applications used, transport protocol information, destination hostname or IP address, usage data, amount of traffic sent and received, and number of flows:
Additional Resources
Please refer to the following article for additional information about traffic analytics: