Businesses with workplaces spread across multiple global locations share and receive data via a WAN link. In these cases, it's important to continuously monitor the network's quality and performance across widespread network locations and paths in order to achieve uninterrupted service.
An IP service level agreement, or IP SLA, is a network measurement technology that uses active traffic monitoring data to analyze the performance of a network in real time. It collects time-based performance data that actively helps monitor and troubleshoot a network.
To do this, the network management system (NMS) sends user datagram protocol (UDP) packets from the IP SLA source to the responder to generate synthetic traffic. The time taken by the responder to acknowledge the data and respond is measured and processed further to achieve the desired statistics. Initially developed by Cisco Systems, IP SLA technology and IP SLA monitors are widely used by leading network service providers and IT admins.
OpManager uses Cisco IP SLA technology to provide uninterrupted, real-time data on the performance of your network by continuously monitoring the traffic in the environment. Businesses utilizing IP applications and services are backed up by Cisco IP SLA monitoring tools to actively monitor IP SLA performance and ensure round the clock availability.
Be it the bandwidth on the key link of your network, the call quality, or the voice over IP (VoIP) traffic, OpManager's IP SLA monitor provides clear visibility into your networks and also helps in active troubleshooting. IP SLA performance or the performance of a network in general is based on three parameters:
Latency or response time: The time it takes for a message to travel from the source to reach the destination is known as latency. Higher latency is a result of the poor performance of a network. Increasing traffic in the network may cause high network latency.
Jitter: Jitter is the interpacket delay variance between arriving packets. In other words, it is the difference in latency between data packets. This variation occurs when the data packets are queued, or due to configuration errors in the communicating devices.
Packet loss: The data loss that occurs during the travel of data packets from the source to the destination is referred to as packet loss. The more packet loss, the poorer the connection. Data loss may occur due to network congestion, software bugs, or problems with network hardware.
OpManager's IP SLA monitor supports the following operations.
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VoIP technology works by converting the analog voice signals into digital signals, and in turn breaking them down into IP packets. These packets are then transferred over the internet, reassembled in the same order, and played as audio signals on the receiver's end. The VoIP monitor in OpManager helps monitor voice call quality between two remote sites by simulating synthetic traffic to analyze various parameters like latency, MOS, RTT, jitter, and packet loss.Learn more
The WAN RTT monitor in OpManager helps monitor the performance of your WAN link by simulating organic traffic, which in turn helps you figure out the round trip time (RTT) for that particular path. RTT is the time taken for a data packet to travel from its source to the destination and back. RTT helps in putting together statistical data on the availability and reliability of the entire network. Learn more
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