InTracer Overview

 

This chapter provides an overview of the Cisco InTracer application and describes its architecture.

It includes the following sections:

•	Introduction

•	Supported Features

Introduction

Cisco InTracer is a high-performance subscriber troubleshooting and monitoring solution. It performs call tracing, control data acquisition, processing and analysis of both active and historical subscriber sessions. This provides a framework for operators to analyze and investigate call flows and call events for subscriber sessions in near real time.

The InTracer solution consists of 2 basic parts:

•	The InTracer Client part runs on the Cisco gateway(s) that needs to be enabled and configured to start sending subscriber traces (control plane information for sessions) to InTracer Server.

•	The InTracer Server part runs on an external box sitting close to the gateway to process and store these subscriber traces.

Important: External application is now supported by the Cisco MITG RHEL v5.5 OS on selected Cisco UCS servers. The Cisco MITG RHEL v5.5 OS is a custom image that contains only those software packages required to support compatible Cisco MITG external software applications. Users must not install any other applications on servers running the Cisco MITG RHEL v5.5 OS. For detailed software compatibility information, refer to the “Cisco MITG RHEL v5.5 OS Application Note.”

Supported Features

The InTracer solution currently supports 2 kinds of tracing functionalists

Nodal Trace

A tracing solution for Cisco ASR5xxx based gateway services. In this tracing solution, once tracing is activated on the gateway, it sends a copy of all signaling packets (transmitted and received) for each subscriber session as part of normal processing to an external server.

•	Protocol packets are sent from the lowest layer where subscriber or session information is available.

•	Additional call correlation information is also sent along with the protocol packets.

•	Correlation of packets is limited to a single gateway.

•	Support is available for PDIF and SGSN

•	Additional Cisco ASR5xxx specific system events like Card / CPU / Task crash etc are sent for hardware / software failures to associate call failures (if any) to these events.

3GPP Trace

A 3GPP standard based tracing solution. In this tracing solution, the gateway sends a copy of all signaling packets (transmitted and received) for only the trace sessions that are explicitly activated (either through management-based activation or signaling-based activation).

•	All packets are GTPv2 packets.

•	Additional correlation information like the Trace Session Reference is sent along with the protocol packets.

•	Correlation of packets using Trace Session Reference is across all gateways on which the same trace is activated.

•	Support available for PGW and SGW.

 

 

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