Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) Solution Edition 2018-11-14
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Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Purpose of IQM IP Quality Monitor (IQM) is a hardware-software system intended for measurement, monitoring and management of network quality parameters and network performance. Any of network topologies are supported for monitoring. The system also takes into consideration a set of characteristics as technical and abstract. Such as: traffic parameters, network architectural levels, service levels, zonal structure, geography and etc. System supports a lot of standard measurement methods on different network layers of OSI model: from L2 (data channel layer) – up to L7 (application layer). Also system has possibility for receiving data from external sources with wide variety of methods: SNMP, CLI, HTTP, etc. For non-standard methods system provides programmable tests. Any abstract data can be received with programmable test. Thus, the IQM agents can work as adapters for data acquisition for the further analysis, monitoring, alarming and presentation. The functional composition of IQM From the technical point of view, IP Quality Monitor consists of two basic elements: quality measurement agents IQMA (IQM-Agent) and management system IQMM (IQM- Manager). The quality measurement agents (IQMA) are software and hardware systems producing automated measurement of quality parameters using internal or standard protocols. Agents can initiate the test sessions, as well as accept requests from other agents for the quality measurements. The test session consists of traffic exchange between initiating agent and test responder. Traffic delivery parameters are measuring during test session. There are a lot of types of tests available for measuring different network layers. The management system (IQMM) performs the following tasks: • Management of IQM subsystems, • Configuration and agent’s status monitoring, • Data receiving, storing, analysis, • Alarming on critical states, • Data presentation with wide variety of tools: graphs, tables, diagrams, standard and custom reports, LLC “Network Probe” Address: 123557, Moscow, Presnensky Val Street, house 27, structure 11 e-Mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-probe.ru 1 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 • Limited access to data in personal account, • Administration. Approach to measurements The traditional approach is applied to the quality parameters measurement: specialized network devices – quality measurement agents IQMA are placed on the key network nodes. Network quality parameters are measured during emulated test traffic exchange between agents or between agent and network service/host/device. Test traffic is formed and shaped in accordance with configuration. Test configuration is stored on initiating agent and synchronized with IQMM database. Using agents on key network nodes will facilitate further processes of network troubleshooting. Thus, for example, it is possible to carry out quality management on the last miles – one of the most problematic divisions of a network. Last mile parameters Core parameters Last mile parameters Agent Test Agent Test Agent Тест LAN LAN VPN Agent Last mile Last mile DMZ Test Agent End-to-end parameters Moments for test starting can be defined in configuration of scheduler as follows: • With pre-defined periods beginning with some moment, • In specific moments pre-defined in cron-like templates • On demand Before each test session agents create a signaling connection with responder and authorize each other with hand-shake. Signaling connection is used to send test configuration to responder and receive measurements from it. The both agents send and receive test traffic-flows for bi-directional measurements. LLC “Network Probe” Address: 123557, Moscow, Presnensky Val Street, house 27, structure 11 e-Mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-probe.ru 2 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 Parameters Each of agents measures traffic delivery parameters in their directions. Parameters measured on OSI L3/4 are: • Packet loss in each direction (as % to total expected packets, and in pieces), • Round-trip times (Min/Avg/Max), • One-way delays in each direction (Min/Avg/Max), • Packet delay variation (Jitter) in each direction, • Rate (Speed) of packets reception for each direction (as % ratio to expected norm, and as bits per second), • Volume of packets received in each direction, • Percentage of reclassified packages received in each direction, • Out of Order - percentage of packets, received in wrong order Test traffic can be configured with different parameters: packet size, VLAN-interfaces, ports, generation speed, class of service etc. LLC “Network Probe” Address: 123557, Moscow, Presnensky Val Street, house 27, structure 11 e-Mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-probe.ru 3 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 Data filtering All measured data are being gathered on management system IQMM. Generally, agents push data to core-system. After IQMM data is inserted into database and processed by various mechanisms: violation-detection, alarming, aggregation etc. After data are entered in the database, they become available for presentation in the web interface. Web-interface provides wide variety of tools for data presentation: graphs, tables, diagrams, standard and custom reports. Custom reports makes possible preparation of customized table reports based on the data stored in database. All reports are exported in excel- compatible format. Filters are used for generation of any type of report. Filters provide the ability to filter the data requested by various features: customers, providers, services, network architectural levels, zonal structure, agents, tests, classes of service, measured parameters. Regular expressions could be used for selections. All features in filters are grouped in accordion. Control policies Policies act for arbitrary group of parameters. Policies use thresholds to divide parameter state into some number of critical zones. Violation takes place when number of threshold excesses more or equal to the number specified in policy. Each violation of threshold could be binded with specific alarming model. Available thresholds are: • Green: limit of normal value. LLC “Network Probe” Address: 123557, Moscow, Presnensky Val Street, house 27, structure 11 e-Mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-probe.ru 4 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 • Yellow: limit of high value. • Red: maximum limit. • Blue: minimum limit. On transition of parameter's state from one critical zone to another it is possible to execute series of alarming: • Notification in special forms of WEB-interface: alarm dashboards, alarm flows, GIS • e-Mail, • SNMP-trap, • syslog, • external procedure call allows to employ any desirable way of notification: HTTP, SQL etc. Support of third-party agents IQM system provides ability for working with agents of other vendors. • Cisco: IP SLA agent built in IOS • Juniper: RPM agent built in JUNOS • Accedian Networks. EtherNID, MetroNID etc. • Rad: via TWAMP-Light Rad MiNID. • Any network devices with support of TWAMP (RFC5357) In case of absence any of supported agents is possible to use any network host with support of UDP/ICMP-echo services. Tests with UDP/ICMP-echo will give only round-trip measurements and one-way will be inaccessible. Anyway in many cases this will be enough. Using programmable test-type it is possible to perform SNMP/CLI-commands on routers, switches, hosts and receive results of command execution for example Cisco SNMP ping, Cisco CLI ping. This approach allows to perform testing in network segments without plugging agents in customer’s addressing plan. LLC “Network Probe” Address: 123557, Moscow, Presnensky Val Street, house 27, structure 11 e-Mail: [email protected] Web: www.net-probe.ru 5 Overview of the IP Quality Monitor (IQM) solution Edition 2018-11-14 Application Layer services On application level (OSI L7) IQMA supports the following built in protocols: FTP, HTTP, IMAP, RTSP, SMTP, TFTP, DNS, +. For application level tests supports the following options: • SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Thus, secured protocols are available, for example HTTPS, FTPS etc; • Reuse of one TCP session for multiple content downloads. This can be useful for influencing the TCP-window and speeding up the TCP connection; • Class of services; • URL-based authorization; • For HTTP application: cookies, HTTP redirect, HTTP persistent connection (HTTP keep-alive) Programmable test-type allows to develop any kind of application and arbitrary scenario of testing. Bandwidth While investigating bandwidth it is interesting to discover available and used bandwidth. Usually there is no need in regular measurement of available bandwidth. Generally it is one-time task which appears on stage of acceptance the channel in maintenance or in case of customer’s complaints. In this case it is recommended to run stress-load tests in on-demand mode or in nighttime using cron-like scheduler template. Let’s consider the network with support of differentiated serving for different classes of service (CoS). It is worth to support Best-effort traffic without any guarantee that its data is delivered. Best-effort obtains unpredictable delivery service, i.e. unspecified variable bit rate and latency and packet loss, depending on the current traffic load. Best-Effort traffic will be suppressed by any priority traffic. In contrast,