nanog mailing list archives

Re: Network SLA


From: Athanasios Douitsis <aduitsis () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:34:57 +0200

Anyone interested in setting up his own IP SLA probes by hand and then
collect the measurements into a database, can use a Perl tool we developed
at 2005:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/saa-collector

It's rather old (SAA got renamed into IPSLA in the meantime) and, in
retrospect, the code is a little rough around the edges, but it's
nevertheless usable.

Regards,
Athanasios



On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Andreas, Rich <
Rich_Andreas () cable comcast com> wrote:

I have found that Cisco IPSLA is heavily used in the MSO/Service
Provider Space.  Juniper has equivalent functionality via RPM.

Rich


-----Original Message-----
From: Saqib Ilyas [mailto:msaqib () gmail com]
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 6:12 AM
To: nanog () nanog org
Subject: Re: Network SLA

I must thank everyone who has answered my queries. Just a couple more
short questions.
For instance, if one is using MRTG, and wants to check if we can meet
a 1 Mbps end-to-end throughput between a couple of customer sites, I
believe you would need to use some traffic generator tools, because
MRTG merely imports counters from routers and plots them. Is that
correct?
We've heard of the BRIX active measurement tool in replies to my
earlier email. Also, I've found Cisco IP SLA that also sends traffic
into the service provider network and measures performance. How many
people really use IP SLA feature?
Thanks and best regards

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Zartash Uzmi <zartash () gmail com> wrote:
As I gather, there is a mix of answers, ranging from "building the
resources
according to requirements and HOPE for the best" to "use of arguably
sophisticated tools and perhaps sharing the results with the legal
department".

I would be particularly interested in hearing the service providers'
viewpoint on the following situation.

Consider a service provider with MPLS deployed within its own network.

(A) When the SP enters into a relation with the customer, does the SP
establish new MPLS paths based on customer demands (this is perhaps
similar
to "building" based on requirements as pointed out by David)? If yes,
between what sites/POPs? I assume the answer may be different
depending upon
a single-site customer or a customer with multiple sites.

(B) For entering into the relationship for providing X units of
bandwidth
(to another site of same customer or to the Tier-1 backbone), does the
SP
use any wisdom (in addition to MRTG and the likes)? If so, what
scientific
parameters are kept in mind?

(C) How does the customer figure out that a promise for X units of
bandwidth
is maintained by the SP? I believe customers may install some
measuring
tools but is that really the case in practice?

Thanks,
Zartash

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Stefan <netfortius () gmail com> wrote:

Saqib Ilyas wrote:

Greetings
I am curious to know about any tools/techniques that a service
provider
uses
to assess an SLA before signing it. That is to say, how does an
administrator know if he/she can meet what he is promising. Is it
based on
experience? Are there commonly used tools for this?
Thanks and best regards


Not necessarily as a direct answer (I am pretty sure there'll be
others on
this list giving details in the area of specific tools and
standards), but I
think this may be a question (especially considering your end result
concern: *signing the SLA!) equally applicable to your legal
department. In
the environment we live, nowadays, the SLA could (should?!? ...
unfortunately) be "refined" and (at the other end - i.e. receiving)
"interpreted" by the lawyers, with possibly equal effects (mostly
financial
and as overall impact on the business) as the tools we (the technical
people) would be using to measure latency, uptime, bandwidth, jitter,
etc...

Stefan






--
Muhammad Saqib Ilyas
PhD Student, Computer Science and Engineering
Lahore University of Management Sciences






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