A large number of businesses are gradually migrating to VoIP technology because of its bandwidth efficiency, low cost and saving of up to 80% on their monthly phone bills. The greatest concern for any business using VoIP for their business communication is uptime and quality. Jitter, latency and packet loss cause a drop in the quality of the voice communication being transmitted. This brings in a very high requirement to monitor VoIP and maintain the quality of the voice communications by making sure the jitter, latency and packet loss values do not exceed an expected threshold.
Cisco IP SLA based VoIP Monitors helps network administrators maintain the quality of calls and troubleshoot the issues with VoIP performance more faster. This helps in ensuring better call quality and lesser downtimes.
What is IP SLA ?
Cisco IPSLA is a feature included in the Cisco IOS Software that gives administrators the ability to analyze service levels for IP applications and services. IPSLA uses active traffic-monitoring technology to monitor continuous traffic on the network. This is a reliable method in measuring over head network performance. Cisco Routers provide IP SLA Responders that give accuracy of measured data across a network.
With IP SLAs, routers and/or switches perform periodic measurements. The exact number and type of available measurements depends on the IOS version. IP SLAs is very widely used in networks to generate time-based network and services performance data. IP SLA is often used with SNMP and NetFlow to generate complete network level data which can help track down network related VoIP issues and ensure service level agreements are met.
Types of Automated Operations IP SLAs Supports:
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HTTP – Measure the round-trip time to access a Web page
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FTP – Measure the round-trip time to transfer a file
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DNS – Measure the DNS look-up time (time to request and receive a reply)
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DHCP – Measure the round-trip time to retrieve an IP address
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TCP Connect – Measure connection time, which is useful for application and server monitoring
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UDP Jitter – Measure round-trip delay, one-way delay, one-way jitter, and one-way packet loss
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VoIP UDP Jitter and MOS – Measure VoIP call path metrics and Mean opinion Score
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ICMP Echo – Measure round-trip delay
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UDP Echo – Measure response times between IP SLA nodes using IP
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ICMP Path Echo – Discover a network path using traceroute and measure the response time between a Cisco router and devices using IP
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ICMP Path Jitter – Measure the inter-packet delay variance along a tracerouted network path
What is VoIP?
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP or Voice over IP) is a general term for a family of methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.
In VoIP based voice communication, the analog voice signal is converted to the digital format which in turn is converted into Internet Protocol (IP) packets. These IP packets are transmitted over the Internet. The above process is reversed at the receiving end.
Monitor VoIP using cisco IPSLA and NetFlow:
NetFlow Analyzer monitors the bandwidth and identifies the reasons for the drop in the quality of voice communications using Cisco’s IPSLA. VoIP monitoring results in displaying data by jitter, latency, packet loss and MOS.
The VoIP Monitor Module features:
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Proactive, continuous monitoring of VoIP Service Levels: monitored QoS metrics include delay, packet loss, jitter and Mean Opinion Score
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VoIP call quality monitoring over entire WAN
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Easy troubleshooting of VoIP problems through bandwidth utilization graphs and QoS reports from Cisco NetFlow monitoring
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Detailed source and destination VoIP call performance reporting
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Extensive VoIP traffic and call performance reports for offline analysis
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Automatic configuration of Cisco IP SLAs (Service Level Agreements) in source routers
VoIP reporting adds more value to the already available NetFlow based bandwidth and traffic analysis and CBQoS reporting. With Cisco’s all reporting capabilities combined into a single tool, you no longer have to be dependent on multiple tools for network monitoring. Our next blog will guide you on how to configure VoIP monitoring in NetFlow Analyzer.
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Regards,
Praveen Kumar
