Learn about how Cisco IP SLA technology enables you to measure performance from many different points in your network at the same time – giving you new perspective into how your global network is performing. As our Head Geek likes to say, this technology is wicked cool!

What the Heck Is Cisco IP SLA?

Cisco IP SLA is “wicked cool technology,” as our Head Geek is fond of proclaiming. That’s because IP SLA allows you to measure transport metrics from one Cisco device to another, or even to other types of IP devices. This gives you the ability to measure performance from many different points in your network at the same time – giving you new perspective into how your global network is performing.

Even better, like NetFlow, IP SLA technology is built into Cisco IOS. That means IP SLA is probably already available to you today on your existing Cisco devices, without you having to lift a finger or spend a dime.

After you setup IP SLA operations on your devices, the results of those operations are stored on the source device in the Cisco RTTMON MIB. This MIB can also be used to configure IP SLA operations with the proper SNMP set commands. (If this sounds complicated, don’t worry – Orion IP SLA Manager auto-discovers the IP SLA-capable devices on your network and automates the set up of the operations).

IP SLA can measure several types of network services including:

• HTTP – Measure the round-trip time to access a Web page
• FTP – Measure the round-trip time to transfer a file
• DNS – Measure the DNS look-up time (time to request and receive a reply)
• DHCP – Measure the round-trip time to retrieve an IP address
• TCP Connect – Measure connection time, which is useful for application and server monitoring
• UDP Jitter – Measure round-trip delay, one-way delay, one-way jitter, and one-way packet loss
• VoIP UDP Jitter – Measure VoIP call path metrics
• ICMP Echo – Measure round-trip delay
• UDP Echo – Measure response times between IP SLA nodes using IP
• ICMP Path Echo – Discover a network path using traceroute and measure the response time between a Cisco router and devices using IP
• ICMP Path Jitter – Measure the inter-packet delay variance along a tracerouted network path

Historically, IP SLA has been implemented using Command Line Interface (CLI) configuration. Results were also read in CLI using various “show” commands. Of course, this can render the technology somewhat “expert-friendly.” SolarWinds has created IP SLA Monitor to make this powerful technology easier to access.

Orion IP SLA Manager, a module for Orion Network Performance Monitor, gives you an intuitive, web-interface to manage IP SLA operations for an IP SLA-capable device. You can simultaneously monitor multiple operations from multiple source devices and set thresholds around each operation. Once the operations are written to the source device, Orion IP SLA Manager tracks the results and provides visual alerting of threshold violations.