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outbound_audit – Outbound traffic analytics

Last updated March 2020

The outbound_audit module provides time-series analytics on the behavior of receiving domains. It is designed to help spot emergent issues, such as blocking, tarpitting, etc. The outbound_audit module differs from the standard analytics available in Momentum in that it allows you to compare short-term real-time data with data from earlier time windows. This makes it easy to spot changes in behavior.

Configuration

The following is an example configuration:

outbound_audit "outbound_audit1"
{
  monitors = ( "300,6" "1800,4" )
  monitor_domains = on
  threshold = 100
}

The following configuration options are available:

domainlist = domain1[,domain2,...]

Hardcode a list of domains that you want to store data for. This overrides and supercedes the threshold setting.

monitor_domains = (on|off)

Monitor individual domains, or simply hold global time-series data.

monitors = ( "window-size, number-of-windows" ... )

Create monitoring window(s) window-size seconds long, and maintain number-of-windows windows historically. In the example above, we create two different time-series: 5 minutes for the past half hour, and 30 minutes for the past 6 hours.

threshold = size

Only store time-series data for domains if they have transited more than size messages. This helps control memory usage by not storing long-term data for small domains.

Console Commands

Use the following console commands below to access outbound_audit data:

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* clear all

Zero-out all statistics.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* clear domain [domain]

Zero-out a domain's statistics.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* domain_list {add|delete} [domain]

Runtime addition/deletion of a domain in the monitoring list.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* show all

Dump all collected time-series data for all collected domains. This can be a large amount of data.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* show domain [domain]

Dump all collected time-series data for the specified domain.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* show domains

List the names of all domains which have collected data.

outbound_audit:*`outbound_audit1`* show global

Show the global (aggregated) time-series data.

The following is an example of a query of the outbound_audit module's time-series data:

11:32:29 ecelerity(2025)> outbound_audit:outbound_audit1 show domain aol.com aol.com 300/0: r: 107 d: 111 dt: 8.20 t: 2 f: 0 aol.com 300/1: r: 190 d: 168 dt: 8.65 t: 1 f: 0 aol.com 300/2: r: 143 d: 154 dt: 8.91 t: 0 f: 0 aol.com 300/3: r: 264 d: 283 dt: 8.87 t: 1 f: 1 aol.com 300/4: r: 240 d: 216 dt: 9.16 t: 3 f: 0 aol.com 300/5: r: 194 d: 207 dt: 6.60 t: 0 f: 0 aol.com 300/6: r: 264 d: 248 dt: 7.78 t: 3 f: 0

The fields for this output are as follows:

domain

The domain name of the receiving domain being queried.

window size/window offset

The size of the window being displayed, plus the number of the window. Thus 300/0 is the current 5 minute window, while 300/2 is the 5 minute window that occured 10 minutes ago (i.e., two windows back from current).

r: receptions

The number of message received by Momentum for that domain during that window.

d: deliveries

The number of messages successfuly delivered to that domain during that window.

dt: delivery time

The average delivery time for a successful delivery to that domain during that window, in seconds. It is not time-in-spool, but time between connection and a successful delivery.

t: transient failures

The number of transient failures (4xx response codes) for delivery attempts to that domain during that window.

f: permanent failures

The number of permanent failures (5xx response codes) for delivery attempts to that domain during that window.

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