Getting Started with VoIP Reports

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1 With ehealth VoIP, you have a powerful system for monitoring and managing your Voice over IP (VoIP) configuration. ehealth reports provide the information you need to answer these questions: Is the VoIP service available? Is the voice quality acceptable? Which VoIP components are causing problems? Is VoIP usage increasing over time? Do we need to increase capacity in the near future? With a converged network that supports both data and voice traffic, you must carefully manage your VoIP components to maintain reliable voice quality while simultaneously supporting other business-critical applications. ehealth VoIP Service Level reports can help executives understand the state of their voice services. Additional reports provide more detailed information for Information Technology (IT) managers and other staff. Service Level Reports for VoIP ehealth VoIP offers three Service Level reports that are designed to provide high-level views of voice service: VoIP Executive Report VoIP Service Customer Report VoIP IT Manager Report Your ehealth administrator can schedule these reports (preferred) to run daily, weekly, or monthly, or you can run them from the ehealth Web interface (takes longer). VoIP Executive Report. Designed for the CIO or business manager who needs to be aware of the state of voice services, the VoIP Executive report answers these questions: What voice quality are users experiencing? Is voice service available 100% of the time? How much VoIP traffic is the network supporting? The VoIP Executive report typically contains five charts: Average MOS Call Path Service Availability Call Volume Calls Network vs. Voice Call Volume The report omits charts, however, if the selected group or group list does not support that information. The next page describes each chart. For additional information about a chart, click the nearest help button. 1. From the ehealth Web interface, click the Run Reports tab. 3. Select Group List.* 4. Select Multi-technology. 2. Scroll down to Service Level reports and select a VoIP report. 5. Select a group list. 6. Specify a sample size and report time. 7. Click Generate Report. * Or select Group to report on a group of Voice Quality Monitor (VQM) response paths, Cisco CallManager elements, or voice gateways.

2 2 Average MOS. This chart displays the average mean opinion score (MOS) for each day, week, or month. The MOS is a measurement of voice quality, from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). If a bar in the chart shows a MOS value lower than 4 (or 3.5, depending on the codec), drill down to a Worst Performers report; in that report, click a path name to generate an At-a-Glance report for more details. Call Volume. This chart indicates the total connection time in call minutes. It also plots a trend line for total connection time over the report period. Use this chart to monitor the volume of calls and to identify trends in usage. If a bar in the chart is unusually high or low, click the bar and drill down to the Group Distribution report to determine whether a particular group in the group list had an unusual call volume. Daily Call Volume This chart shows that call volume is increasing over time, providing valuable data for capacity planning. This chart shows consistently high voice quality, except for Day 3. Click that bar to drill down to another report (such as Worst Performers) for more information. Call Path Service Availability. This chart shows how often the VoIP service was available to users. If a bar in the chart does not meet the goal, click the bar and drill down to a Worst Performers report for a list of call paths with the least availability; in that report, click a call path name to generate an At-a-Glance report for further details. Calls. This chart shows the total number of completed and incomplete calls during the report period. Use it to monitor call volume over time. If a bar indicates an unusually high number of incomplete calls, click the bar and drill down to a Worst Performers report. In that report, click a path name to drill down to an At-a-Glance report for further details. Daily Calls This chart shows an unusually low number of completed calls and a high number of incomplete calls on Day 4. To investigate, click that bar and drill down to another report for more details. In this chart, voice service meets the goal of % availability except on Day 3, when it is at 95%. Click that bar to drill down for more information.

3 3 Network vs. Voice Call Volume. This chart shows total network traffic over Class of Service (CoS) WAN links, indicating which portion of the traffic was voice traffic. If a bar in the chart indicates an unusually high call volume, click the bar and drill down to a Group Distribution report to determine which group in the group list initiated the high amount of voice traffic. This chart shows network volume over six weeks, indicating the portion of total volume that is voice traffic (shown in blue). The third bar in the chart (highlighted by the arrow) indicates an unusually high volume of voice traffic that day; click the bar to drill down for more details. VoIP Service Customer Report. This report offers a summary of the level of voice service that service providers deliver to their customers. It includes the following charts: Average MOS Call Path Service Availability Call Volume Network vs. Voice Call Volume VoIP IT Manager Report. Designed for the IT manager who needs to monitor the level of voice service provided, troubleshoot problems, and perform capacity planning, this report provides more detailed information than the other VoIP Service Level reports. It answers these questions: Is voice service acceptable? If not, why? Are the voice service, Cisco CallManager applications, and other VoIP components available and working well? If not, which components are having trouble? How much VoIP traffic is the network supporting? When will we need to increase capacity? For a complete list of the charts that this report provides and examples and descriptions of each, enter the following in your Web browser s address field, where ehealth is the ehealth Web server name: For example, if your ehealth Web server resides on a system named green, enter the following: These are the same charts that are included in the VoIP Executive report; however, they show this information as it relates to a particular service customer. Service providers and their customers can use this information to determine whether the level of voice service delivered meets service level agreements (SLAs).

4 4 At-a-Glance Reports for VoIP At-a-Glance reports provide IT staff with summary information about the following VoIP components: Cisco CallManager servers and applications Voice quality response paths Voice gateways CoS elements and associated WAN links Each At-a-Glance report presents several charts on a single page. This allows you to easily compare variables to troubleshoot problems with voice service and VoIP components. When you identify a problem, you can drill down to a Trend report for more details. The following figure shows a sample At-a-Glance report for a Voice Quality Monitor (VQM) response path. For more information about VoIP At-a-Glance reports, enter the following in your Web browser s address field: At-a-Glance Report VQM Response Path Element sanders- Trend and Top N Reports for VoIP Trend reports and Top N reports are often useful when troubleshooting problems with voice service or VoIP components. For example, suppose that, in the VoIP Executive report, the Average MOS chart indicates that voice quality was unusually low on a particular day. From that chart, you can drill down to a Worst Performers report (a variation of the Top N report) to identify the call paths with the lowest MOS ratings. Worst Performers - MOS Rating Element Name MOS Rating sanders-underhill vqm-ap(out) 3.1 sanders-underhill vqm-ap 3.8 sanders-underhill vqm-ap(in) 4.5 From the Worst Performers report, you can click a path name to generate an At-a-Glance report for that call path. From a chart in the At-a-Glance report, you can drill down to a Trend report for more details about a trouble spot to help identify the source of the problem. For example, suppose that, in the At-a-Glance report, the Degradations from Maximum Call Quality Out chart shows a spike in voice quality degradation. You can click that chart to run a Trend report for a closer view of the sources of the degradation. ehealth Trend Report Divide by Time Application VQM sanders-underhill vqm-ap(out) This sample Trend report shows that voice quality declined sharply around 2:00 p.m. due to increases in delay. For more information about VoIP Trend and Top N reports, enter the following in your Web browser s address field: or

5 5 Reporting on Quality of Service (QoS) QoS technology allows you to implement different levels of service for different types of network traffic (voice, video, and data). If your routers are QoS-enabled, you can run ehealth reports to monitor and manage QoS metrics for voice traffic. This capability is especially important to service providers who need to meet customer SLAs for voice service. ehealth QoS reports can help you do the following: Monitor SLA metrics by class of service (CoS). Detect proactively when a metric is about to be violated, so that you can take corrective action. Determine whether a customer has exceeded agreed-on CoS metrics. Identify which CoS elements are causing problems. The QoS Health report displays metrics for your CoS elements on network utilization, packet drops, and packet delays. It compares performance variables to QoS parameters and indicates when a QoS SLA has been violated. When the QoS Health report indicates trouble, you can drill down to At-a-Glance, Trend, and Top N reports to investigate problems that may be degrading the quality and performance of your voice traffic. This chart from a QoS Health report shows network utilization for a QoS element. Monitor this chart to determine when QoS elements are reaching capacity. For more information about ehealth QoS, enter the following in your Web browser s address field: Reporting on Cisco CallManager If you use Cisco CallManager to manage VoIP devices and call services over your data network, ehealth can ensure that Cisco CallManager is performing well and meeting demands. ehealth monitors the health and availability of Cisco CallManager servers and applications, including Attendant Console, Conference Manager, Cisco Telephony Interface (CTI), and Cisco Messaging Interface (CMI). You can run the VoIP Service Level reports on a group of Cisco CallManager applications to learn the following: How many calls are made every day? week? month? What is the daily call volume (total number of call minutes)? Is the trend increasing or decreasing? Is Cisco CallManager available 100% of the time? To monitor the health and performance of the host systems for Cisco CallManager, you can run a System Health report (for a group of systems) or At-a-Glance reports (for individual systems). You can also use At-a-Glance reports to monitor the performance of individual Cisco CallManager applications. For example, the At-a-Glance report for the Cisco Conference Manager shows metrics for unicast conferences. These charts from an At-a-Glance report for a Cisco CallManager application service show availability, CPU utilization, and memory utilization. The report also includes charts for calls, trunk channels, FXS ports, and FXO ports. This information can help you to monitor the performance of the Cisco CallManager application to make sure that it is meeting user needs. When you view these reports from the ehealth Web interface, you can drill down from the charts to a Trend or Top N report for additional details. This can help you focus on trouble spots, to identify the source of a problem. For more information about Cisco CallManager, enter the following in your Web browser s address field:

6 6 Reporting with Cisco IOS IP SLAs If your Cisco routers are bundled with Cisco IOS IP Service Level Agreements (SLAs), you can use the IP SLAs with ehealth to provide additional metrics on voice quality. (This can be in addition to or instead of using ehealth Voice Quality Monitor [VQM] to monitor voice quality between end points.) When you use Cisco IP SLAs, ehealth configures a Cisco router to generate traffic to specified network resources. It regularly measures the availability of the resource and response time between the router and the resource. The Cisco IP SLAs can also measure other important metrics such as latency, jitter, and packet loss. You can use this information to monitor metrics that affect voice quality. You can run At-a-Glance and Trend reports on performance variables such as round-trip delay, jitter, and jitter variation to obtain an accurate view of the quality of voice service that a user experiences. These charts from an At-a-Glance report for a response path between a Cisco router with IP SLA and a response destination show metrics for jitter. Use this information to monitor and manage attributes of network traffic that affect the quality of voice service. For more information about ehealth and Cisco IP SLAs, enter the following in your Web browser s address field: CiscoRouters.html Reporting with Juniper RPM If your Juniper routers support the Juniper real-time performance monitoring (RPM) feature, you can use RPM with ehealth to provide additional metrics on network performance and voice quality, including packet response time and jitter. When you use ehealth Response to configure RPM, the Juniper router generates traffic between specified network resources, and measures performance information for those response paths. ehealth then polls these response paths, allowing you to monitor metrics that affect voice quality. You can run At-a-Glance and Trend reports on performance variables such as roundtrip delay and jitter, providing an accurate view of the quality of service a user experiences. NOTE Juniper RPM defines jitter as the difference between the maximum response time and the minimum response time for a group of pings (Jitter = Maximum Response Time Minimum Response Time). This jitter measurement may differ from that calculated by other devices. For more information about ehealth and Juniper RPM, enter the following in your Web browser s address field: More about VoIP Components In addition to the Service Level, At-a-Glance, Trend, and Top N reports, you can run AdvantEDGE View queries for details on the performance of your VoIP components. For example, you can run queries to monitor the following: Health and availability of Cisco CallManager applications and servers Voice quality for response paths between two systems, using active testing For more information, enter in your Web browser s address field and select the links to Monitoring Voice Quality and Monitoring Cisco CallManager.

7 7 For More Information To learn more about the reports and capabilities of ehealth VoIP, refer to the following resources, which are available in the Web help or on the TotalDoc CD. ehealth Topic Voice over IP Reports Suggested Resource Online help in the ehealth Web interface: ehealth Focus topics: ehealth and VoIP Overview Getting Started with Voice over IP: Planning Benefits of Managing Quality of Service with ehealth Getting Started with ehealth for Voice Voice Quality Monitor Getting Started with ehealth for Voice Cisco CallManager Getting Started with ehealth for Voice Cisco Unity & Unity Bridge About VoIP Licensing VoIP: Deployment and Discovery Quick Reference Online help in the ehealth Web interface: Guides: Introduction to ehealth ehealth Reports Guide ehealth Administration Guide Copyright 2006 CA. All rights reserved.