---
title: "Zones Guide"
slug: "zones-guide"
updated: 2025-06-24T21:50:19Z
published: 2025-06-24T21:50:19Z
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.catchpoint.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Zones Guide

Zones allow you to easily categorize traffic generated by your tests into broad groupings based on the names/IPs of the hosts serving the content. For example, you can use zones to distinguish primary content served directly from your servers, content from 3rd party hosts, and CDN-distributed content. When analyzing your test data, you can easily breakdown/filter by zone to compare performance.

## Configuring Zones

1. Navigate to the **Settings** module and select **Zones**.  

![image.png](https://cdn.document360.io/cb4af8f9-6751-4fd2-b39c-07aae832badb/Images/Documentation/image%28452%29.png)
2. Click **Create** to set up a new zone, or click an existing Zone to configure its properties
3. Give the Zone a **Name**, and optionally a **description**
4. Add one or more **Zone Rules**, which tell Catchpoint how to identify traffic that belongs to the zone. For each Zone Rule, configure the following:
  1. **Name** - a name for this rule
  2. **Based on** - specifies whether catchpoint will look at the **Request URL** or the **Initiator URL** when applying the rule
  3. **Match** - choose whether the rule should match the Host name, Host name + path, URL, or IP
  4. **Regex** - select if using a regular expression for the rule
  5. **Case Insensitive** - select to ignore capital vs lower-case. (e.g. "Catchpoint" and "catchpoint" are treated the same if enabled.)
  6. **Criteria** - the literal string or regex that must be matched.

### Zone Rule Examples

- Match all the requests sent to `ad.doubleclick.net`:
  - Match: HOST
  - Criteria: `ad.doubleclick.net`
- Match all the request sent to any sub-domain of "doubleclick.net":
  - Match: HOST
  - Regex
  - Case Insensitive
  - Criteria: `.*\.doubleclick\.net`
- Match any requests to "ad.doubleclick.net/adj/..." :
  - Match: URL
  - Regex
  - Case Insensitive
  - Criteria: `.*\.doubleclick\.net/adj/.*`
- Match anything but "www.amazon.com":
  - Match: HOST
  - Regex
  - Case Insensitive
  - Criteria: ^((?!(www.amazon.com)).)*$

For more on regex rules when creating Zones, please consult [this knowledge base article](https://docs.catchpoint.com/docs/CATCHPOINT-REGULAR-EXPRESSIONS).

### Enable Zone Data Collection for a Test

You can enable Zone Data collection at the Product, Folder, or Test level under **Advanced Settings**. ![image453](https://cdn.document360.io/cb4af8f9-6751-4fd2-b39c-07aae832badb/Images/Documentation/image%28453%29.png)

## Zone Data Analysis

Once enabled, you can view your Zone data in Explorer by choosing **Zones** under **Column By** or Breakdown By. (Zone enablement isn't retroactive, so it is necessary to wait for future test runs with Zones enabled).