Firewall constraints for RUM

Real User Monitoring (RUM) uses HTTP technologies to send performance data from client browsers to Dynatrace. To do this, the RUM JavaScript is injected into your HTML pages. This code snippet communicates with Dynatrace. However, to fully enable RUM, you must verify that your firewalls, proxies, and web servers are configured properly and allow all required data to pass through.

New beacon protocol format in Dynatrace version 1.219+

Starting with Dynatrace version 1.219, we will provide you with a call-to-action card allowing you to switch all your web applications to the latest beacon format.

All prior versions will reach their end-of-life with Dynatrace version 1.229. If you don’t manage to switch prior to this version, your firewall or security appliance might block a beacon because of the format change. Also, if your OneAgents and RUM JavaScript versions are outdated, actions will be dropped and you won't be able to see any monitoring data for your application.

However, you don’t need to take action if your application was created with Session Replay enabled or if you once activated this feature for your app. In this case, you are already using the new beacon protocol.

Actions required to switch to the latest beacon format:

  • Prepare your firewall or security appliance to allow the new format in case you apply filtering. The difference between the new query strings and the older ones is that the new strings now follow the proper format with an ampersand & as a separator instead of a semi-colon ;, as was used previously.
  • If you are still using an unsupported version of OneAgent (version 1.167 or earlier), we recommend that you update your OneAgents immediately. Otherwise, the cookies generated by OneAgent will be detected as invalid.

HTTP requests

For RUM to function fully, the following browser requests must be delivered to Dynatrace:

  • ruxitagentjs_, the JavaScript tag that's used for auto-injection—the name of the tag may contain additional information, such as active code modules and/or the version of the tag. Agentless RUM requests use the format ruxitagent_.
  • /rb_<id> and /bf or /bf_<id> are the monitor signals the RUM JavaScript sends back to Dynatrace.
    • The monitor uses query parameters such as app, flavor, format, referer, session, srvid, type, visitID, size, zip, va, tt, and ns.
    • The POST body contains the payload. The payload is sent with the content type application/octet-stream.

HTTP headers

RUM uses these HTTP headers. All of these must be able to reach Dynatrace.

Request headers

Header Request Purpose
x-dynatrace request Used for transaction stitching in HTTP headers. Set by OneAgent to link web servers. Ensure that network components, such as firewalls and routers, are never configured to remove these headers. Incorrect configuration can potentially lead to broken pure paths. Some network components disable such requests (and deliver HTTP 403 error, which is why it is necessary to configure these components to accept the x-dynatrace header.
x-dynatrace-application request

Contains the ID of the RUM application, the cookie domain, and the injection rule (noop, auto, before, or after). Also contains the injection pattern when injectionRule=after or injectionRule=before.

Used in case there's some proxy in between a user's browser and the original process that delivers the page.

x-dynatrace-origin-url request Preserves the original URL of the request in case of URL rewriting.
x-dtHealthCheck request
X-dynaTrace-RequestState request Tracks the depth of a subpath tree to avoid endless PurePaths.
x-dtpc request Identifies proper endpoints for beacon transmission; includes session ID for correlation.
x-dtreferer request Contains the referer of the page for an action and improves the correlation results.
x-dtc request Contains information for correlation of cross-origin XHRs.
Cookie request Sets the dtCookie cookie in case the HTTP request doesn't contain any.
X-Ruxit-Forwarded-For request Used to track proxy scenarios by the NGINX code module.
X-ruxit-Apache-ServerNamePorts request Used by the Apache code module to synchronize service naming with the PHP code module.
X-ruxit-Disposition request Used by the IIS code module to declutter .NET code module subpaths.
Accept-Encoding request Discarded by the Apache code module during the fine-tuning of HTML injection behavior.
Content-Encoding request Discarded during the fine-tuning of HTML injection behavior.
If-None-Match request Discarded when caching is suppressed.
If-Not-Modified-Since request Discarded when caching is suppressed.
If-Match request Modified when caching is suppressed.
If-Range request Modified when caching is suppressed.
traceparent request Used for W3C tagging.
tracecontext request Used for W3C tagging.
referer request Contains the address of the previous web page from which a link to the currently requested page was followed.
user-agent request Used for browser and OS detection.

Response headers

Header Response Purpose
X-OneAgent-JS-Injection response

Confirms that the RUM JavaScript has been injected to avoid duplicate injection.

Has one of the following values:

  • true: the injection has been completed.
  • block: injection must not be attempted at this time.
X-ruxit-JS-Agent response

Confirms that the RUM JavaScript has been injected to avoid duplicate injection.

Has one of the following values:

  • true: the injection has been completed.
  • block: injection must not be attempted at this time.
x-dtHealthCheck response

Set for responses to special requests. Contains the result of the RUM health check—potential reasons why there is or might be a problem with the injection of the RUM JavaScript.

To perform a health check, a page must be requested with the dtHealthCheck user agent.

x-dtAgentId response If the RUM health check is enabled, any involved OneAgent code module adds its ID here. Set for responses to special requests.
x-dtInjectedServlet response Contains the fully qualified name of the injected servlet or filter.
Set-Cookie response Sets the session state cookie of the OneAgent.
ETag response The OneAgent appends a custom string to the original ETag response header to track the changes in the application configuration.
Last-modified response If the ETag response header is manipulated, the OneAgent also subtracts 1 second from the original value of this header. Set for responses to special requests.
Content-Length response Adapted upon HTML injection. Set for responses to special requests.
Vary response Adapted during HTML injection into compressed responses. Set for responses to special requests.
Content-Encoding response Adapted during HTML injection into compressed responses.
Content-Type response Set for responses to special requests.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin response Set for responses to special requests.
Cache-Control response Set for responses to special requests.

Cookies

RUM uses the following cookies. All of these must be able to reach Dynatrace. See the Cookies page for more information about how Dynatrace uses cookies.

Cookie Max size Purpose
dtCookie Tracks a visit across multiple requests.
dtLatC 5 B Measures server latency for performance monitoring.
dtPC 54 B Required to identify proper endpoints for beacon transmission; includes session ID for correlation.
dtSa max URL length Intermediate store for page-spanning actions
rxVisitor 45B Visitor ID to correlate sessions
rxvt 27B Session timeout

Mobile RUM

The OneAgent for Mobile uses the x-dynatrace header for the tagging of HTTP requests. In hybrid setups, the dtAdk cookie is used to join hybrid sessions and the dtAdkSettings cookie for syncing settings between OneAgent for Mobile and the RUM JavaScript.