# Platform Best Practices

Use these guides to deploy and optimize ThousandEyes across agents, tests, dashboards, and alerts. The guidance here focuses on foundational platform configurations, including agent placement, account groups, test protocol choice, dashboard storytelling, and alert tuning, that apply regardless of which specific applications you monitor.

## Available Guides

* [**Choosing the Right Test Protocol for Cloud and Enterprise Agent Network Tests**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/How_to_choose_the_right_test_protocol_for_Cloud_and_Enterprise_agent_tests)
  * **Why use this:** Details the physics of probing and how different protocols interact with network policies.
  * **What this is for:** Gaining precision in test configuration and firewall traversal.
* [**Optimizing SYN vs SACK Probing Methods to Avoid Unexplainable Packet Loss**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/Optimizing-SYN-vs-SACK-probing-methods-to-avoid-unexplainable-packet-loss)
  * **Why use this:** Explains the exact difference between TCP SYN and TCP SACK behavior, helping distinguish actual forwarding loss from firewall drops.
  * **What this is for:** Focusing on root cause analysis and gathering evidence to reduce mean time to innocence.
* [**Using Dashboards to Tell a Story**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/using-dashboards-to-tell-a-story)
  * **Why use this:** Shows how to frame dashboards as communication tools, focusing on executive summaries, SLA reporting, and before-and-after comparisons.
  * **What this is for:** Communicating ROI, vendor SLAs, and strategic value to leadership.
* [**Best Practices for Implementing Account Groups**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/implementing-account-groups)
  * **Why use this:** Provides a framework for organizing infrastructure, managing permissions, and separating data across large deployments.
  * **What this is for:** Managing mass deployment, infrastructure organization, and compliance at scale.
* [**Self-Serve Test Settings and Alerts for Connected Devices**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/cdev_test_settings_alerts)
  * **Why use this:** Explains how to manage test creation, agent assignment, and alerting at scale across Connected Devices fleets, including ISP routers and whiteboxes, without manual "Click-Ops".
  * **What this is for:** Scaling mass deployment and automating configuration for large distributed agent fleets.
* [**Streaming Connected Devices Test Metrics to Google Pub/Sub**](https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/best-practices/google-pubsub-for-connected-devices)
  * **Why use this:** Explains how to export test metrics programmatically from ISP routers and whiteboxes to Google Pub/Sub for external storage, custom analytics, or automation workflows.
  * **What this is for:** Integrating large-scale fleet data into broader Infrastructure as Code (IaC) environments and custom data pipelines.


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