Monitoring VoIP IP SLA

WhatsUp Gold provides specialized VoIP SLA monitoring necessary for tracking Quality of Service (QoS) and Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics for Voice over IP (VoIP). After you discover and configure devices for VoIP monitoring, you can view metrics using the WhatsUp Gold Custom Performance Monitors dashboard.

Background

VoIP sessions must transport telephony data as a continuous or near-continuous stream to ensure each side of the voice conversation sounds natural, not jittery, and free from discernible drop offs or echo. Where the Quality of Service (QoS) for IP traffic is inherently 'best-effort' (first-come, first-serve), IP routers and IP call centers collect end-point and round-trip statistics critical for tracking and estimating VoIP call quality. WhatsUp Gold VoIP applies specialized monitors to gather and aggregate these VoIP SLA metrics. The VoIP measurements include call jitter (one-way latency), predictive level of call impairment ICPIF (Impairment / Calculated Planning Impairment Factor), round trip times, and an active monitor that gathers a periodic call quality metric as a 'virtual' VoIP session and generates a Mean Opinion Score (MOS).

WhatsUp Gold VoIP monitoring provides:

Before You Begin

Before you run the VoIP Configuration Utility and begin VoIP monitoring, you will need:

Important: Prior to launching the VoIP Configuration Utility, select ANALYZE > Dashboards > Home Dashboard to ensure dashboard views are successfully created and properly configured before the VoIP-specific view is created.

Configuring VoIP Monitors

After network discovery of routers and Cisco call centers that support VoIP statistics, you can configure VoIP monitors on devices supporting VoIP metrics.

Step 1: Launch the VoIP Configuration Utility (from the WhatsUp Gold Admin Console)

  1. Log into the Windows host where WhatsUp Gold is running.
  2. Launch the WhatsUp Gold Admin Console (Windows start menu > All Programs > Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold > WhatsUp Gold Admin Console).
  3. From the Admin Console, launch the VoIP Configuration Utility (Tools menu > VoIP Configuration Utility).
  4. Follow the instructions described in Step 2: Finding and Configuring Devices that Support VoIP SLA Monitoring.

Step 2: Find and Configure Devices that Support VoIP SLA Monitoring

  1. From the VoIP Monitor Configuration Utility welcome screen, click on Next.

    The utility returns a list of devices in WhatsUp Gold with monitoring enabled.

  2. Select the device(s) in the list you want to monitor for VoIP statistics. If the device you want to monitor is not in the list, apply one of the following and then click on Reload.
    • Find the device you want to add in the Discovery Map, select it, and from the device card click on Start/Update Monitoring.
    • If the device you want to monitor is neither in the list nor in the Discovered Network map, ensure you have the correct credentials, get the IP address for the device and perform a single IP scan to include it as part of the Discovered Network map.
    • Apply monitoring. Select it on the map. Then from the device card click Start/Update Monitoring.
  3. Click Next.

    Performance Monitors Setup Screen displays with a summary of current statistics.

  4. Select the Round Trip Time tables representing end-stations on your network that you want to capture VoIP statistics for and then click on Next.
  5. Filter devices you want performance monitoring on and then click on Next.
  6. Select the devices you want to measure Mean Opinion Score from and then click on Next.

    WhatsUp Gold VoIP Monitor Configuration Summary screen displays.

  7. Ensure that the log messages in the summary screen indicate that monitors were added successfully. Click on Next and then Finish to exit the utility.

Step 3: Check the monitor setup on the Source Device and View Report Data

To ensure you are monitoring VoIP IP SLA data, you can:

See Also

Network Environment Monitoring

Viewing Devices on the Map

Applying Thresholds, Alerts, Notification Schedules, and Action Policies

Monitoring Wireless

Monitoring Virtual Machines and Infrastructure