Introduction
 A big “Howdy” from SolarWinds
based in Austin, Texas
» Josh Stephens, Head Geek, Monster Blogger,
Constant Tweeter
» Nikki Jennings – SE Manager, Amateur UFC Fighter
» Emmanuel Tychon – Technical Manager w/Cisco
Systems, Part-time Bull Fighter
 Today’s Topic: Monitoring WAN
Performance with IP SLA
 Who is SolarWinds?
» What we do…
» Who are our customers?
» The SolarWinds community…

Housekeeping
 Can you hear me now?
 If not, use the WebEx Q&A panel to
contact the moderator
 How do you win the free stuff?
 How do you ask questions?
 Will this thing be recorded?

Agenda
 Introduction to IP SLA
 Why IP SLA?
 Technical Alternatives
 SCP Questions
 Requirements
 IP SLA Operations
 Configuring IP SLA
 IP SLA Impacts
 Where to get more help
 IP SLA Tools Demo
 Summary and Q&A

What is IP SLA?
Cisco IOS IP SLAs (IP Service Level
Agreements) is a feature included in
Cisco IOS Software that can allow
administrators the ability to Analyze IP
Service Levels for IP applications and
services. IP SLA's uses active traffic-
monitoring technology to monitor
continuous traffic on the network. This is
a reliable method in measuring site-to-
site network performance. Cisco Routers
can also act as IP SLA Responders to
provide more accuracy in measurements
across a network.
Source – Wikipedia.org

Traditional Network Monitoring
 Implies a “hub and spoke” methodology
 NMS typically sits in the middle and polls outward
 Doesn’t represent site-to-site performance
 Implies two-way but tests one-way
 Today’s networks
 MPLS vs. Frame relay
 Fully-meshed networks are common-place
 Local sites with direct internet access

Why IP SLA?
 Network troubleshooting and monitoring
 Perspective is ultra-important
 Multiple test points
 Several different types of operations
 Existing Infrastructure
 No need to deploy probes or agents
 Built into already deployed Cisco devices
 Easy to configure/leverage

Technical Alternatives
 Probes
 Expensive
 Increase your carbon footprint
 Hard to maintain
 Slow deployment
 Agents
 Nobody likes a footprint
 Even harder to maintain/manage
 Not usually free

SCP Question #1
The first 5 correct answers get a free SolarWinds t-shirt
 Question – In order for a network to achieve “Five 9’s”
availability, what is the maximum amount of downtime
for the year?
 Answer – 5 minutes

Requirements for using IP SLA
 IP SLA Devices
 Most Cisco routers and switches
 Especially helpful for in edge devices
 Need CLI or SNMP access to enable
 IOS (see next slide)
 IP SLA Statistics use
 View from command-line
 Real-time monitoring tools
 Long term monitoring for historical trending and
alerting

Availability and Operations
12.1(1)
11. 12.0(5)T 12.1 12.2(11)T
Feature/Release 12.0(3)T T 12.2(2)T 12.2(14)S 12.2(25)S
2 12.0(8)S E (Infra2)
12.2
ICMP Echo X X X X X X X X X
ICMP Echo Path X X X X X X X X X
SSCP(SNA) X X X X X X X
UDP Echo X X X X X X X X
TCP Connect X X X X X X X X
UDP Jitter X X X X X X X
HTTP X X X X X X X
DNS X X X X X X X
DHCP X X X X X X X
DLSw+ X X X X X X X
SNMP Support X X X X X X X
UDP Jitter One Way
Latency X X X X X
FTP Get X X X X X
MPLS/VPN Aware X X X
Frame-Relay (CLI) X X X
ICMP Path Jitter X X X
APM X X X
Source – Cisco.com

Key IP SLA Operations
 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

Configuring IP SLA
 Command-line options
 Configurable via CLI
 Easy to setup for a single test
 Hard to maintain for large scale monitoring
 Automated options
 Typically via SNMP
 Requires the read-write community string

SCP Question #2
The first 5 correct answers get a free SolarWinds t-shirt
 Question – Which network management protocol would
be used to analyze top users of bandwidth across a
WAN circuit?
 Answer – NetFlow

Where to get more help?
 Thwack.com
 SolarWinds.com
 Cisco.com/go/ipsla

IP SLA Tools Demonstration
- Slide 16 -

Summary and Q&A
Thank you for attending!
To learn more or to download free 30-day trials of
SolarWinds products visit: www.SolarWinds.com
Contact information
Josh Stephens, Head Geek
headgeek@solarwinds.com
twitter: sw_headgeek
Blog: http://thwack.com/blogs/geekspeak/
p.s. Remember to renew your maintenance!!!