Cisco IP SLAs uses active traffic monitoring--the generation of traffic in a continuous, reliable, and predictable manner--for
measuring network performance. IP SLAs sends data across the network to measure performance between multiple network locations
or across multiple network paths. It simulates network data and IP services, and collects network performance information
in real time. The information collected includes data about response time, one-way latency, jitter (interpacket delay variance),
packet loss, voice quality scoring, network resource availability, application performance, and server response time. IP SLAs
performs active monitoring by generating and analyzing traffic to measure performance either between Cisco devices or from
a Cisco device to a remote IP device such as a network application server. Measurement statistics provided by the various
IP SLAs operations can be used for troubleshooting, for problem analysis, and for designing network topologies.
Using IP SLAs, service provider customers can measure and provide service level agreements, and enterprise customers can
verify service levels, verify outsourced service level agreements, and understand network performance for new or existing
IP services and applications. IP SLAs uses unique service level assurance metrics and methodology to provide highly accurate,
precise service level assurance measurements.
Depending on the specific IP SLAs operation, statistics of delay, packet loss, jitter, packet sequence, connectivity, path,
server response time, and download time can be monitored within the Cisco device and stored in both CLI and SNMP MIBs. The
packets have configurable IP and application layer options such as a source and destination IP address, User Datagram Protocol
(UDP)/TCP port numbers, a type of service (ToS) byte (including Differentiated Services Code Point [DSCP] and IP Prefix bits),
a Virtual Private Network (VPN) routing/forwarding instance (VRF), and a URL web address.
Being Layer-2 transport independent, IP SLAs can be configured end-to-end over disparate networks to best reflect the metrics
that an end-user is likely to experience. Performance metrics collected by IP SLAs operations include the following:
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Delay (both round-trip and one-way)
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Jitter (directional)
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Packet loss (directional)
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Packet sequencing (packet ordering)
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Path (per hop)
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Connectivity (directional)
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Server or website download time
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Voice quality scores
Because IP SLAs is accessible using SNMP, it also can be used by performance monitoring applications like CiscoWorks Internetwork
Performance Monitor (IPM) and other third-party Cisco partner performance management products. For details about network management
products that use IP SLAs, see
http://www.cisco.com/go/ipsla .
SNMP notifications based on the data gathered by an IP SLAs operation allow the router to receive alerts when performance
drops below a specified level and when problems are corrected. IP SLAs uses the Cisco RTTMON MIB for interaction between external
Network Management System (NMS) applications and the IP SLAs operations running on the Cisco devices. For a complete description
of the object variables referenced by the IP SLAs feature, refer to the text of the CISCO-RTTMON-MIB.my file, available from
the Cisco MIB website .