mPulse session information

When an end-user browses to a site that’s instrumented with mPulse, Boomerang generates an RT cookie. It contains various pieces of information about the user’s session, as viewed by Boomerang.

Here is an example:

nu=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fweb-and-mobile-performance.jsp&dm=website.com&si=fe68c9ef-c89b-4918-b18d-b7faebd22524&ss=1500590776086&sl=1&tt=1353&obo=0&sh=1500590778761%3D1%3A0%3A1353&cl=1500590808877&bcn=%2F%2F36f10833.akstat.io%2F&r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%2F&ul=1500590809249&hd=1500590809568

The individual subfields are as follows:

Field	Description
`bcn`	The URL that beacons will be sent to.
`cl`	The timestamp of the most recent click event (epoch ms).
`dm`	The mPulse-instrumented domain.
`hd`	The timestamp of the previous page's pagehide event (epoch ms).
`nu`	The URL of a link on the current page that the user click on/submitted a form to in order to leave this page.
`obo`	The number of pages visited in this session where Boomerang could not measure the page load time.
`r`	The URL of the previous page visited in this session.
`rl`	Rate limited flag. 1 if rate limited.
`se`	Session expiry length (in seconds).
`sh`	Session debugging information for the last 5 viewed pages [no longer used].
`si`	The unique ID for this session.
`sl`	The number of pages visited in the session (prior to the current page).
`srst`	Details of the session prior to it being reset for expiry.
`ss`	The session start time (epoch ms).
`tt`	The sum of all page load times within this session.
`ul`	The timestamp of the previous page’s unload event (epoch ms).

The RT cookie is never sent to mPulse servers, but is instead assigned to the domain of the site being instrumented (e.g. website.com). It’s used exclusively on the client side, by Boomerang.

The cookie is persistent, not a session cookie, and expires after 7 days of inactivity. This is because we want sessions to continue even if the end-user closes their browser and then returns within 30 minutes.

If the mPulse customer disables session tracking for their site, then Boomerang will not generate the RT cookie.

mPulse bandwidth testing information

When an end-user browses to a site that’s instrumented with mPulse and has bandwidth testing enabled, Boomerang generates a BA cookie. The cookie looks like this:

BA="ba=nnnnnnn&be=nnn.nn&l=nnnn&le=nn.nn&ip=iiiiii&t=sssssss"

The individual subfields are as follows:

Field	Description
`ba`	The user’s calculated network throughput in bytes per second.
`be`	The statistical standard error at the 95% confidence interval in calculating the user’s network throughput.
`l`	The HTTP latency between the user’s computer and your server in milliseconds.
`le`	The statistical standard error at the 95% confidence interval in calculating the user’s network latency.
`ip`	Whatever was passed in as the `user_ip` configuration parameter to boomerang, used to rerun the test if the user’s network changes.
`t`	The timestamp in seconds since the epoch when the bandwidth test was last run. Used to rerun the test if it was run more than 7 days ago.

mPulse consent information

When the Consent Inline Plugin is enabled we provide the option to an end-user to opt-in to or opt-out of mPulse. We use a first-party BOOMR_CONSENT cookie in order to remember an end-user’s choice. BOOMR_CONSENT is persistent, not a session cookie, and expires after 1 year of inactivity.

If the Consent Inline Plugin is not enabled, there will be no integration with cookie consent managers, and this cookie will not be set.

If the Consent Inline Plugin is enabled, it will be opt-out by default. Customers can configure it to opt-out or opt-in depending on their needs.

The BOOMR_CONSENT cookie has 2 values: opted-out indicates that an end-user has opted-out. opted-in indicates that an end-user has opted-in.