Service providers offer services for transferring essential data in the form of voice, video, and data packets through a network. This information, when traversing through the network path requires different?conditions of?bandwidth, jitter, latency, and packet loss depending on the data type being transferred. Here arises a basic requirement for the proper allocation of resources to manage the different types of data flow. QoS, a set of mechanism, provides effective solution for managing the data flow with desired performance levels. Service providers offering MPLS VPN, can provide enhanced services with different QoS mechanisms for the various types of data traffic. This will ensure free flow of data traffic without congestion or any other disruptions.

MPLS Management and Monitoring Software offers QoS management for controlling the performance of data traffic.? Diffserv, which is the most accepted architecture and the standard Cisco IP SLA are the architectures supported in the MPLS QoS Management solution.

MPLS QoS Management Highlights:

• Automatic discovery of DiffServ and Cisco IP SLA objects
• Configuration support for ICMP Echo, UDP Echo and Jitter
• Provisioning of Cisco IP SLA
• Performance metrics with graphical representation
  
• Reporting and analyzing the root cause of IP SLA violation
  

The available features and the functionalities present in both architectures are provided in detail below.

Automatic Discovery

Discovery of DiffServ Objects

In MPLS network, DiffServ is supported on the Provider Edge to suppress the traffic flow based on the type of service defined for the customer. The WebNMS MPLS pack has powerful discovery process to easily discover the physical, data, network, and transport layers present in the MPLS network. As part of QoS management, it automatically discovers the Diffserv related managed objects.? After discovering the Provider Edge, the software discovers the following managed objects associated with the DiffServ architecture.

• Classifier : This object consists of match criteria that need to be considered when a packet is converted from a proprietary packet(FrameRelay,ATM,Ethernet etc) to MPLS packets.
• Meter : SLA metrics that needs to be processed on each packet.
• Action :
  
• Dropper :? Dropper Algorithm to add or drop the packet.
• Marker : Marked with DSCP values specific for this packet.
• Counter : Packets added for metering purpose.
  
• Queue : Packets added to this before Scheduler kicks in to send the packet in the network.
• Scheduler : The object that kicks up the queue to send data.

Discovery of Cisco IP SLA Objects

In addition to DiffServ support, the following Cisco IP SLA traffic flow related objects are also discovered.

• ICMP Echo
• Path Echo
• UDP Echo
• Jitter

Configuration

WebNMS MPLS QoS Management currently supports ICMP Echo, UDP Echo and Jitter configurations.

Performance

Diffserv

In DiffServ architecture, all the packets that match certain criteria to be sent via transport domain are stored in a counter. The MPLS software monitors the counter to provide information on the octets and counters that are transferred.? The Dropper is also monitored to find the number of octets/packets that are dropped due to congestion in the network.

Cisco IP SLA

The software has?provision to generate reports and graphs to help monitor the various usages in the network data flow.? The monitored parameters include Average Jitter, Packet loss ratio, and average RTT for Jitter, and the threshold violation and connectivity for ICMP and UDP Echo.