Configuring Cisco IP SLAs ICMP Jitter Operations

The IP SLAs ICMP Jitter Operation feature provides the following key benefits:

• End-to-end performance measurements between a Cisco device (source) and any other IP device (destination) using ICMP.
• Proactive threshold violation monitoring through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) trap notifications and syslog messages.

The IP SLAs ICMP jitter operation supports the following statistical measurements:

• Jitter (source-to-destination and destination-to-source)
• Latency (source-to-destination and destination-to-source)
• Round-trip time latency
• Packet loss
• Successive packet loss
• Out-of-sequence packets (source-to-destination, destination-to-source, and round-trip)
• Late packets

IP SLAs ICMP jitter uses a two ICMP time stamp messages, an ICMP Timestamp Request (Type 13) and an ICMP Timestamp Reply (Type 14), to provide jitter, packet loss, and latency. IP SLAs ICMP jitter operations differ from IP SLAs ICMP echo operations in that ICMP echo uses ICMP Echo request and reply (ping). Devices that are fully compliant with RFC 792, Internet Control Message Protocol , must be able to respond to the time stamp messages without requiring an IP SLA responder at the destination. Cisco devices support RFC 792.

The ICMP API sends a configurable number of request message packets out of the interface. The data (time stamp) that is received in the request is returned in a reply message packet along with another time stamp. Every packet includes three time stamps: an Originate (sent) Timestamp, a Receive Timestamp, and a Transmit (reply) Timestamp.

IP SLAs utilizes the time stamps to calculate jitter for each direction, based on the difference between interarrival and interdeparture delay for two successive packets. If the difference is positive, it is counted in positive jitter. A negative value is counted in negative jitter. Separate measurements for the source-to-destination and destination-to-source data paths can be used to identify problems in your network because the paths can be different (asymmetric).

Each ICMP packet includes a sequence number in its header that is used to count the number of packets received out of sequence on the sender. Both the sequence number and the receive timestamps can be used to calculate out-of-sequence packets on the source-to-destination path. If the receive time stamp for a packet is greater than that of the next packet, the first packet was delivered out of order on the source-to-destination path. For the destination-to-source path, the same method can be applied. Note that if the packet is out of order on the source-to-destination path, it should be returned out of order to the sender unless there is also misordering on the destination-to-source path.

If any packet cannot be sent due to an internal or unexpected error, or because the timerwheel slot containing the packet is missed, it is counted as Packet Skipped. This metric is very important because statistics are measured on sent packets only.

All timed-out packets are counted towards Packet Loss. Successive packet loss is calculated by counting, and adding, the number of successive dropped packets. Successive packet loss is reported as minimum of successive packet drop and maximum of successive packet drop.

All other statistics are calculated using the same logic as a UDP jitter operation.

Note	This operation does not require an IP SLAs Responder on the destination device.

1.    enable

2.    configure terminal

3.    ip sla operation-number

4.    icmp-jitter {destination-ip-address | destination-hostname} [interval milliseconds] [num-packets packet-number] [source-ip {ip-address | hostname}]

5.    frequency seconds

6.    history history-parameter

7.    owner owner-id

8.    tag text

9.    threshold milliseconds

10.    timeout milliseconds

11.    tos number

12.    vrf vrf-name

13.    end

Router> enable

Router# configure terminal

Router(config)# ip sla 10

Router(config-ip-sla)# icmp-jitter 172.18.1.129 interval 40 num-packets 100 source-ip 10.1.2.34

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# frequency 30

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# history hours-of-statistics-kept 3

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# owner admin 

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# tag TelnetPollServer1 

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# threshold 10000

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# timeout 10000 

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# tos 160 

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# vrf vpn-A 

Router(config-ip-sla-icmpjitter)# end

Note	All IP SLAs operations to be scheduled must be already configured. The frequency of all operations scheduled in a multioperation group must be the same. List of one or more operation ID numbers to be added to a multioperation group is limited to a maximum of 125 characters, including commas (,).

1.    enable

2.    configure terminal

3.    Do one of the following:

4.    exit

5.    show ip sla group schedule

6.    show ip sla configuration

Router> enable

Router# configure terminal

Router(config)# ip sla schedule 10 start-time now life forever

Router(config)# ip sla group schedule 1 3,4,6-9 

Router(config)# exit

Router# show ip sla group schedule

Router# show ip sla configuration

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