Continuing our theme of fast cats, this release is named after the lynx. The lynx is a medium-sized, wild cat with sub-species that live across North America, Europe, and Asia. Not only are they fast on land, but lynx are swift swimmers as well. Read on to see what’s new in Lynx!
Cloud Services - Network Path Insights
With the growing reliance on cloud services such as hosting, storage, Content Delivery Network (CDN), and Domain Name System (DNS), it is crucial to promptly identify and address any issues that arise in these services. Catchpoint’s IPM solution now provides even more information to help you quickly troubleshoot issues with cloud services.
The network path visualization has been updated to include more details about connections to AWS, Azure, and GCP. These details include Service Name, Region, IP Prefix, and Network Border Group when available. Additionally, a tag will indicate whether the data is verified with the respective cloud service.
This enhancement will help ITOps teams quickly pinpoint the source of network issues. Network path insights are available in the hop-by-hop Sankey graph in Records and Smartboard for traceroute tests.
The network path visual is also improved to show hops within the source and destination networks. This will help to quickly determine whether the issue is within the source network, the destination network, or somewhere on the internet.
BGP Hop-By-Hop Visual Grouping
Grouping functionality allows users to view routing paths grouped by Peer, Collector, Continent, Country, or Registry. This enhancement is designed to simplify network troubleshooting by making it easier to identify routing issues from specific data sets and providing multiple perspectives to analyze routing information. This is available from BGP Smartboard.
Other BGP Updates
- Added Collector and Peer details in BGP Events Table.
- Visual updates to improve BGP Smartboard usability.
Internet Sonar Enhancements
Internet Sonar detects outages in major services across the internet and correlates them with the services you’re testing in your Internet Stack. When incidents occur, this helps you to quickly answer “is it me or something else?”
Changes to Sonar in this release include:
- Ability to filter alerts by specific ASNs and ISPs
- Enhanced incident-detection algorithms
- Overview dashboard default timeframe increased from 6 to 24 hours
- New monitored services:
- Cloudflare Public DNS
- Google Analytics
- SAP CX AI
- SAP Gen AI Hub
Sign up to try Internet Sonar here.
Stack Map - API Test Support
Stack Map enables you to easily create topological maps that visualize your services and their dependencies across the Internet Stack. With this release, you can now select API tests when creating/editing services in your stack map. API tests are selectable for any service category except DNS Services.
Playwright & Puppeteer
Playwright and Puppeteer are cross-browser tools for advanced browser automation and testing. With Catchpoint's Playwright and Puppeteer test types, you can build multi-step transaction tests to capture the performance of a complete user journey on a website.
Total Blocking Time (TBT) Metric Support
You can now monitor TBT across all your Playwright and Puppeteer tests via our portal —including Explorer, Records, Instant Test, Alerts, and Custom Dashboards — and access TBT data through our API.
Webhook Support
Test data and alert webhook works by having the API consumer register a destination URI with the API Publisher, which then sends data to this URI as it becomes available.
Expanded MIME Type Support
Support for additional MIME types to capture response content in the waterfall. The new supported types include application/javascript, application/json, application/xml, and more.
Standard User Agent String
Playwright and Puppeteer now utilize a standard User Agent string that includes the term “Catchpoint.” This update will make it easier to whitelist requests originating from Catchpoint.
NOTE: These changes are dependent on Agent release.
WebPageTest Instant Test
Public Share & Export
Want to share your WebPageTest Instant test results? Now you can with just a simple click of the "Share" button. Easily create and share a link with anyone, even if they don’t have access to the Catchpoint portal. Need to capture your test results locally? You can now download them in JSON, HAR, or CSV formats as well.
Request and Domain Blocking
Leverage request and domain blocking to pinpoint which resources are vital for your website’s functionality. By blocking specific requests, you can simulate slow network conditions or resource unavailability, enabling you to assess your website's performance under suboptimal conditions. Additionally, blocking requests to certain domains can help you evaluate how your website manages security threats.
To block specific requests, first configure and run a WebPageTest Instant Test. Then navigate to the Waterfall section of the test results, click on the specific request that you would like to block, and go to Request Blocking. Here you can block requests to specific Domains or URLs, and then re-run the test to compare performance.
Custom Metrics
Introducing custom metrics, designed to dive deeper into your website's unique characteristics! Custom metrics uncover specific data points relevant to your site. This empowers you to make informed decisions that boost overall performance and user experience, all without writing custom code. Simply input the metric you want to review during test configuration. For example, you could configure a metric called “Lazy Loaded Images in Viewport,” which identifies and displays all images that were delayed in loading.
Test Run Three-Dot Menu
You now swiftly navigate to view the processing breakdown in JS, filmstrip, and video for each individual test run from the new three dot menu in WPT Instant Test Summary tab. Download trace data in JSON format easily, and if tcdump is enabled during test configuration, you can also download the TLS Key Log and a tcdump, all from one place.
NOTE: These changes are dependent on Agent release.
Enterprise Node
Enterprise Nodes enable you to perform tests from locations within your organization. Companies typically deploy Enterprise Nodes as physical or virtual appliances in their data centers, branch offices, call centers, or brick-and-mortar stores.
RHEL 9 Support
We are excited to announce that our Enterprise Nodes now support RedHat 9. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9) is the latest version of Red Hat’s enterprise-grade operating system, designed to support hybrid cloud environments. To install a node on RHEL 9, please see the help documentation.
Global Audit Log
The Global Audit Log offers a centralized view of recent user changes across the portal. It reliably details the user, the modifications made, and their timestamps. Additionally, it provides links to detailed change logs for in-depth information where applicable. By consolidating all changes in one place, you can easily access specific details without searching through multiple logs. “Manage Global Audit Log” user permissions are required to view and access the Global Audit Log. You can access the Global Audit Log via the new button in the charm bar next to Favorites.
Integrations - New Main Menu Option
All functionalities previously found on the legacy API Page has been migrated to the new Integrations Page, including the new Webhook, Rest API and Event API pages. Integrations can be found in the main menu just above Settings.
Kerberos Authentication Support
Catchpoint customers who use NTLM for authentication in HTTP/Web tests should be aware that Microsoft has officially deprecated NTLM authentication on Windows and Windows servers. Developers are advised to transition to Kerberos authentication to avoid future issues. In line with this, Kerberos will now be supported for Object tests, providing a more secure and robust authentication method. Future releases will extend this support to more test types.
NOTE: *These changes are dependent on Agent release. *
Additional Features
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Web-Object tests are now named HTTP (Object).
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Users can now delete contacts with associations.
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The errors “OtherFileMismatch[50121]” and “OtherLocalWrite[50122]” are now being mapped to their respective error messages: “Other File Size Mismatch” and “Other Local Write” instead of being mapped to “Unofficial Status Code.”
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Endpoint now supports multibyte unicode characters.
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Traceroute destination pings now include ASN and the corresponding matched prefix.
Bug Fixes
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API response pagination is now working for RUM Favorite Charts. User can now retrieve all RUM Favorite Chart data using V2/V3 API endpoints.
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Scenario Section in the new RUM Smartboard now shows data for both y-axis metrics.
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Additional monitor runs are no longer intermittently reported as primary test runs.
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Zone collection is now working for Object test
Catchpoint Agent Release
Some of the features in the release (where noted) require the latest version of the Catchpoint Agent to be running on the selected Node. The Catchpoint Agent rollout involves two dimensions:
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Public Nodes managed by Catchpoint: Agent rollout on public nodes takes place in stages following each release. Agent release announcements are posted here: https://nodestatus.catchpoint.com.
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Private Enterprise Nodes managed by customers: Customers can upgrade Enterprise Nodes any time at their convenience. We advise customers to upgrade Enterprise nodes promptly after each release to benefit from the new feature functionality.
Instructions for upgrading Enterprise nodes can be found in the help documentation.