In short. Use Bot overview for pre-cache traffic and Bot Management for post-cache bot signals from the Next-Gen WAF.
Definition: Fastly's Bot overview dashboard shows pre-cache inspection metrics about the volume and types of bot traffic directed at a service. The Bot Management dashboard shows post-cache inspection metrics about suspected bot activity and bot-related signals detected by the Next-Gen WAF.
Key facts
- Pre-cache inspection examines all requests before the cache layer and covers both cached and uncached resources, according to Fastly's Bot Management documentation.
- Post-cache inspection analyzes cache-miss requests with the Next-Gen WAF, so Bot Management inspects traffic going to the origin.
- The Bot overview is under Security > Bot Management > Dashboards. Fastly's monitoring documentation also documents Service and Time filters.
- The system-generated dashboards documentation describes the Bot Management dashboard as a view of suspected bot signals.
Which dashboard covers pre-cache traffic?
Choose Bot overview when the question concerns traffic inspected before Fastly's cache layer. Fastly says this deployment option lets you control bot access to both cached and uncached resources and enables ContentGuard. The monitoring page says the dashboard monitors the volume and types of bot traffic directed at the service.
Open it in the Fastly control panel with this path:
Security > Bot Management > Dashboards
The documented cards include total bot inspected requests, human traffic, bot traffic percentage, request traffic over time by Bot Management action, bot traffic by category, and top bots by requests. The top-bots table includes each bot's identity, category, and the action applied to its requests. Fastly says these metrics use statistical sampling: it analyzes a percentage of traffic and scales the results to represent total traffic, so results can vary slightly from exact totals.
Which dashboard covers post-cache inspection?
Choose Bot Management when the inspection deployment works with the Next-Gen WAF after the cache stage. Fastly's deployment documentation describes this dashboard as reporting post-cache metrics about suspected bot activity and bot-related signals detected by the Next-Gen WAF. The same documentation defines post-cache inspection as analysis of cache-miss requests, with inspection limited to traffic going to the origin.
Fastly's system-generated dashboard page says that the Bot Management dashboard provides system-generated data about suspected bot signals. Its cards include verified bot activity, bot activity for suspected and verified bots, client challenges, headless bot activity, AI bot activity, compromised credentials, and traffic source anomalies. The page presents access through the Fastly control panel and the Next-Gen WAF control panel.
How do the two views relate to a deployment?
Fastly allows Bot Management to use one or both deployment options. For a service with pre-cache inspection, use Bot overview for the sampled request and bot-category metrics. For a service with post-cache inspection, use Bot Management for the Next-Gen WAF's suspected-bot signals. The pre-cache monitoring page separately documents a Protection page at this path:
Security > Bot Management > Protection
That page shows the number of requests for each bot category and identity, while the Bot overview dashboard summarizes sampled traffic metrics.
Related terms
FAQ
Which dashboard should I open for cached and uncached requests?
Open Bot overview. Fastly defines pre-cache inspection as examining all requests before the cache layer and controlling access to cached and uncached resources.
Which dashboard shows suspected bot signals from the Next-Gen WAF?
Open Bot Management. Fastly describes it as a post-cache dashboard for suspected bot activity and bot-related signals detected by the Next-Gen WAF.
Are Bot overview totals exact request counts?
Fastly says the dashboard metrics use statistical sampling and may vary slightly from exact totals.
Sources
- Fastly, "About Bot Management", undated
- Fastly, "Monitoring bot traffic", undated
- Fastly, "Monitoring with system-generated dashboards", undated
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