(Editor's Note: This is part 3 of 4 in a series of blog posts about the new aspects of Kerio Control 7.4.)

Bandwidth hungry streaming media, voice over IP, video conferencing, and Web based services have come to dominate Internet usage in many corporate networks. Having a good dashboard with real-time charts and stats, including easy to decipher information about who's using the most bandwidth, can help fix many looming network problems.

The Dashboard in Kerio Control 7.4 has several informational windows called "tiles". Many of the tiles contain system health information, which is nice to know, the current uptime, if an update is available, disk/cpu/memory utilization, and whether all features and WAN links are functioning properly. The dashboard tiles are completely customizable, admins can select which tiles to display and arrange tiles as they like on the page.

I'm most excited about the bandwidth related tiles. I can now see the recent Internet bandwidth usage, along with the top downloaders. I can also add extra charts for specific traffic rules, interfaces, or bandwidth policies. I've gotten so used to the new dashboard and the information that it provides, that when I log into earlier versions of Kerio Control, I feel a bit lost. It's kind of like walking into a multi-level parking garage and realizing I forgot what floor I parked on - which has been known to happen.

-Brian