UC

Performance
Management

©2015 NETSCOUT ° CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

 Introduction to nGeniusONE v5.4.1
• With the release of nGeniusONE v5.4.1 NetScout continues to
provide a top-down view into any IP-based business services,
including voice, video and data

• Rather than look at individual elements in isolation, nGeniusONE

provides an overarching view into the performance
characteristics of all infrastructure and application components
associated with service delivery

• Several enhancements to workflows, ease of design and faster

time to resolution have been incorporated

• Let’s take a look!

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 Course Objectives
• This course includes lecture, demonstrations, and hands-on
exercises.
• At the end of the course, students should be able to:
• Describe essential nGeniusONE Unified Communications
functionality
• Use nGeniusONE Services, Monitors, and Enablers to monitor
and troubleshoot performance issues
• Utilize multiple workflows to isolate problems in the network

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 Agenda
• Course Introduction
• Creating Services / Service Domains
• Using Service Monitors and Service Enablers
• Service Dashboards
• Workflows
• Use Cases

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nGeniusONE for
Unified
Communications

Overview
 Unified Communications (UC) Overview
UC server provides visibility
into some of the following
common causes for voice
and video call quality issues:
• Changes in QoS tags, VLAN,
and negotiated CODECs on a Co-Resident
per segment basis
• IP network impairments
such as packet loss, jitter
• Payload metrics such as
echo and speech levels
• MOS values based on IP
network impairments as well
as based on conversational
quality

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 VoIP and Network Performance Challenges
• End users expect high quality IP voice services equal to that
delivered by standard PSTN networks
– Latency and jitter will not be accepted just because phone calls are
now traversing the traditional data communications network
• Organizations depend on their data network for ensuring
optimal customer service and maintaining productivity.
– Adding voice traffic to the network can not negatively impact the
delivery of these mission-critical applications.

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 VoIP and Network Performance Challenges
• Networks and application delivery mechanisms are extremely
sophisticated, with an intricate interdependence of diverse,
multi-vendor infrastructure components and technologies,
– Including switched networks
– Load-balanced configurations
– Application accelerators
– Redundant segments
– Ultra high-speed connections
– Virtual circuits, and virtual servers
• Adding voice and video to the IP environment further
complicates efforts to manage the performance of network and
application services

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 The “Secret Sauce” behind nGeniusONE
Adaptive Session Intelligence (ASI) Technology

• Coherent dataset that furnishes monitors with a correlated

perspective on relevant metrics supporting contextual charts for
the visual representation of data
Real-
Real-Time and Actionable
Operational Intelligence
BI/CEM and Service
Big Data Analytics Assurance

Packet
Network Cyber Flow
Monitoring Intelligence

User
Communities

End-to-End IP Service Traffic

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 Unified Communications Landscape
ASI visibility in the Data Center

Call Manager Presence Conferencing Voice Virtual Desktop Mail Database Storage
Servers Servers Servers Messaging Servers Servers Servers

SIP Trunking

Telepresence
Service Enablers

VDI ADC/SLB
Authentication

AD / LDAP DHCP

DNS
RADIUS
Messaging & Collaboration e.g.
Jabber

Call Centers, Branch,

Campus etc. WAN / LAN SIP Call Centers, Branch,
Trunks Campus etc.

Video PSTN
Internet

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 Understanding the UC User Experience
Infrastructure, Signaling and Media Performance helps identify root
cause

‘Bad Voice Quality’

“Users not registering” “Takes a long time to connect” “I can’t hear you”
“Phones not connecting” Presence not working
“Slow to connect call” “The picture is blocky”
“My Video has no audio”

Network and Enablers Call Signaling and UC Voice and Video Media
Infrastructure Performance Server Performance Performance
Call Manager Presence Session
Servers Servers Border
Controllers

(Network Congestion, QoS, (Server Load Balancing, DSCP Mismatch, MOS, One
LDAP/AD, DNS, DHCP) Signaling Errors) way calls, loss, jitter

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 VoIP Signaling and Media Summary
• The call must be established, speech encoded and packetized for
sending, transmitted within the correct QoS class, then decoded
and re-sequenced

IP Phone 1 IP Phone 2

INVITE
100 Trying
INVITE
100 Trying

180 Ringing
180 Ringing Call Setup
200 OK
200 OK
Sequence

ACK
ACK

RTP / RTCP
Voice Media
BYE
BYE

ACK ACK Call Teardown

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Voice and
Video IP
Network
Performance

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 Factors Affecting Voice Quality

Sender IP Network Receiver

De- Jitter
Encoder Packetizer Up Link Backbone Down Link Decoder
Packetizer Buffer

•Packet Loss
•Coding Distortion •Network Delay •Delay
•Codec Delay •Jitter •Buffer Delay
•Delay •Buffer Loss

•Codec Impairment
•Delay

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 Mean Opinion Score (MOS)
• Mean Opinion Score
– Concept derived from subjective experiments
– 32 people are asked to rate the quality of pre-recorded
– Audio or video on the following scale:
• 5 Excellent
• 4 Good
• 3 Fair
• 2 Poor
• 1 Bad
– A MOS is the AVERAGE or MEAN opinion over the subjects of the
experiment
• An Objective MOS value predicts the MOS that would be
obtained for a given RTP stream if it had been assessed in an
subjective experiment

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 Voice IP MOS
• Voice IP MOS - measure of voice quality, reflect distortion due to
voice codec and network transmission errors, based on ITU-T
P.564
– G.711 – max 4.3 with no network transmission errors
– G.729 – max 3.9 with no network transmission errors
• Voice IP MOS degradation – reduction of MOS due to network
transmission errors
• Network transmission errors:
– Packet Loss
– Jitter
– IP Delay – calculated from information extracted from Real-time
Transport Control Protocol (RTCP)

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 Video IP MOS
• Video IP MOS - measure of video quality, reflect distortion due to
video codec and network transmission errors
• Video IP MOS degradation – reduction of MOS due to network
transmission errors
• Compression degradation – reduction of MOS due to codec
being used, bit rate and frame rate
• Network transmission errors:
– Packet Loss
– Jitter
– IP Delay – calculated from information extracted from RTCP

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 Packet Loss

Uniform packet loss IP end device

x x x
MOS = 3.8

Bursty packet loss

x x x MOS = 2.9

• Simple packet statistics such as mean packet loss and mean jitter
are poor predictors of end-user quality
• Need to take the detailed time-behaviour of the packet loss and
jitter into account
• For video IP MOS, also take type of lost frames (I, P, B) into account

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 Inter-Packet Arrival Delay (Jitter)

15ms 30ms
Actual inter-
packet delay

Audio
Jitter
Expected inter-
packet delay
e.g. 20ms
-5ms Early +10ms Late
(negative jitter) (positive jitter)

Expected frame arrival rate: 40ms

Expected inter-
arrival delay of
Packets belonging to
same video is zero

Video Leads to high

Jitter negative jitter values
for first packet in
frames on slow links
-25ms jitter
+5 ms jitter (inter-packet delay of 40ms
(0 expected) expected at 25 FPS)

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 IP Network Performance Metrics
Metric Possible Causes
IP MOS, IP MOS
Wrong codec, packet loss, jitter
degradation
QoS setting in congested network, faulty
Packet loss (%)
switch/router
LAN/router congestion, unexpected
jitter (ms), IP Delay (ms)
routing
QoS, QoS mismatch Misconfiguration, unexpected routing
Single direction SBC configuration, signaling
Short call Signaling, one-way, bad quality
Incorrect choice of video codec, low bit
Compression
and frame rates due to configuration or
degradation
bandwidth restriction

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 Media
Payload
Performance

21 ©2015 NETSCOUT ° CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

 Voice Payload Monitoring
• Advanced Diagnostic with payload/waveform analysis based on
ITU-T P.561, P.562 and P.563 Recommendations
– Payload voice quality on: speech level, noise level, distortion, echo
loss, echo delay
– Supported codecs: G.711, G.729, G.722, AAC-LD, Siren
• LQ-MOS – Listening Quality MOS, reflects quality of voice signal
in one direction
• CQ-MOS – Conversational Quality MOS, reflects how easy to hold
a conversation between two parties

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 Voice Payload Metrics

Metric Possible Causes

Speech level Level settings in end devices, gateways and SBC;

(dBov) speaker, microphone sensitivity
Noise level Faulty microphone and/or noise canceller, noisy
(dBov) background
Misconfigured/under-provisioned echo cancellers,
Echo loss (dB) acoustic feedback (cell phone, speaker phone,
conferencing room, PC without headset)
Echo delay Long network path (international call via satellite,
(ms) cell call)
LQ-MOS Distortion, speech level, poor signal to noise level
CQ-MOS Echo loss, echo delay, speech level, noise level

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 Echo
• Talker echo is when the person speaking hears themselves after a delay
(> 40ms)
• Become annoyance when echo level and delay reach certain threshold
• Satellite and cell calls involve longer delay, hence more likely to suffer
from echo problem
• Echo Types: electrical (PSTN/hybrid) or acoustic

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 PSTN/Hybrid & Acoustic Echo

Acoustic Echo Path

Acoustic Echo Path
Loudspeaker
Phone
(echo canceller) Cell
Phone

VoIP
IP Network Media Gateway
Phone

PSTN
PSTN/Mobile Phone
Network Reflection
at Hybrid at
Exchange

(-20 dBov) Tx amplitude

Echo return loss (ERL)

= 35 dB
(-55 dBov) Rx amplitude

Delay

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nGeniusONE

©2015 NETSCOUT CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

 Logging into nGeniusONE

Username = Administrator
Password = netscout1

nGeniusONE Console

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 Lab 1: Using the nGeniusONE Console
Description:
The purpose of this lab is to become familiar with the nGeniusONE
server console.

Objectives: After completing this lab, you will be able to:

• Log on to the nGeniusONE Server
• Navigate the console
• Modify the settings and console
• Run a host analysis

Approximate time to complete the lab: 10 - 15 minutes.

Refer to Lab 1 in the Hands-On Lab Exercises guide.

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 Using the nGeniusONE Console
• Browser window is divided into two panels
• Initial view displays the customizable upper panel where you can
pin icons for frequently used nGeniusONE modules
• Lower panel, which you can open and close, contains icons and
launch points for all accessible nGeniusONE modules

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 Launch Panels
• Launch modules from either the upper or lower panels
• When a module is running inside the main browser window, its
icon is displayed and the module can be closed in the upper
panel
– The module with current focus is highlighted

• Modules in the upper panel are "pinned" by default or by

activating them in the lower panel
– Click the pin next to each module to remove it from the upper panel.

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 Lower Panel
• Contains the complete collection of nGeniusONE modules
• Grouped into categories
– Monitor, Troubleshoot, Configure, and View
• Some features, such as Service Monitors and Health, are further
grouped into components
– Expand these components to access their individual entries
• Pin or unpin the modules to add or remove them in the upper
panel

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Search And
Discover
 Search and Discovery Tool

• Queries ASI tables for

search criterion
– Discovers all associations
for search content
• Example – if a client
address is searched
– Associated applications
and locations are
displayed
– Associations are listed
along with a total count
• Search data is ranked
by either total
transactions
or throughput

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 Enterprise Search Example

• The address 8.8.8.8 is

entered in the search
field with a time frame
of 1 Hour and has
generated a number of
metrics:

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 DNS Monitor

Select DNS Monitor

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 Service Monitor Drill Down

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 DNS Service Monitor drilldown

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 Enterprise Search – Host Only

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 Drilling Down to Host Analysis

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 Host Analysis Summary View

• ME, Client and Server Names

• Inbound and Outbound metrics

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 Enterprise Search - Application

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 Auto Fill Feature
• Search string or select search
elements by using the auto
complete feature,
– Lists search entries by the
alphanumeric character entered
and their rank by number of
transactions or octets.
• Entering an “sj” as illustrated
retrieves all relevant data .
– Notice that the list is truncated.
– Click Show more to display
additional list items.

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 Lab 2: Search and Discovery
• Description:
– The purpose of this lab is to familiarize you use the Search and
Discovery feature
• Objectives: After completing this lab, you will be able to:
– Understand the Search and Discover functionality
– Run a host analysis

• Approximate time to complete lab: 10 - 15 minutes.

• Refer to Lab 2 in the Hands-On Lab Exercises guide.

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©2015 NETSCOUT ° CONFIDENTIAL &
PROPRIETARY