A. Cisco SPA is an IP management product that delivers-through continuous network monitoring-a high-fidelity Layer 3 view of the IP control plane. By listening to routing protocols and related activity, the product reconstructs the state of the network and its service paths, providing a representation of all the Layer 3 components and paths in "network-time." The intelligence delivered by Cisco SPA makes possible a preventive, rather than a reactive, network management capability. Network operators and engineers can pinpoint a variety of persistent and transient problems that are difficult to diagnose-or even invisible-with traditional management techniques and tools.
Q. What are the primary capabilities of Cisco SPA?
A.· Network-time, high-fidelity view of network and paths: Listening to all routing protocol messages allows Cisco SPA to derive and display a network-time graphical view of both the Layer 3 topology and the paths between selected source/destination pairs (called service paths).
• Proactive and forensic analysis of IP network problems: Cisco SPA facilitates detection and isolation of routing problems, root-cause determination of service path disruptions, and comparison of the as-running with the as-configured state.
• Customizable alerts and reports: Cisco SPA offers a comprehensive set of reports and alarms, many of them configurable by the network operator.
• Interface to third party systems: Cisco SPA easily interfaces with fault, network management, and other third-party systems and fits seamlessly into existing operational environments with little need for changes to established methods and procedures.
• Simple installation and configuration: With a PC-based management console, Cisco SPA is easily deployed using network appliances fully compliant with stringent carrier and enterprise management security standards.
• Ability to track down transient failures that are not visible to other systems: Cisco SPA allows network operators to detect and address short transient failures, which are often only seconds in duration.
• Rapid identification of errors that are unseen by other systems: Optional alarms alert users of a wide variety of configuration and related conditions, captured in network-time and often preventing major, networkwide outages.
• Rapid root-cause analysis for outages and suggested remedial actions: Cisco SPA's ability to store and replay historical events helps enable engineers to "rewind" the state of the network and replay network events. This capability assists in identifying problems and allows for correlation with extrinsic events to identify the root cause of past service disruptions.
Q. Who can benefit from Cisco SPA?
A.· Service owners can use Cisco SPA to quickly isolate the root cause of service degradation and disruptions. Facilitating rapid remediation helps ensure a higher-quality service experience to the end user.
• Network operators can proactively detect and isolate the causes of transient network disruptions and address them before users call the help desk. By proactively addressing transient instabilities, operators can also prevent future service quality degradation.
• Network engineers can quickly perform complex diagnosis and isolation of network instabilities, allowing them to shrink mean time-to-repair (MTTR), which, in turn, reduces operating costs.
• Network planners can use Cisco SPA trending and statistics to help ensure optimal network operation.
Q. What is the core technical capability within Cisco SPA?
A. Cisco SPA provides a high-fidelity view of network topology and service paths with network-time data that is essential to managing and delivering next-generation IP services.
Next-generation applications, such as video, voice, interactive gaming, and capital markets data distribution, place more stringent demands on the infrastructure than traditional Web and e-mail data services carried over IP. These new services require a network-time understanding of service paths to correlate degradation in service quality with infrastructure disruptions. Some of these disruptions, such as those due to link stability, are transient in nature; others, such as misconfigured protocols, can cause long-term network malfunctions.
"Pops and hisses" in today's digital services remain invisible to traditional management and diagnostic products, which typically employ techniques such as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) polling to track performance and alarm on faults. These issues cannot be properly addressed by the existing break-fix procedures because service-affecting failures can come and go between polling cycles.
Q. What are the primary business benefits of Cisco SPA?
A.· Maximize customer satisfaction by increasing service availability. Cisco SPA reduces the service disruptions and increases the quality of service through its ability to see the network as the network sees itself.
• Cut operating costs by improving productivity of human and network resources. Cisco SPA trims down the cost of day-to-day operations by helping enable staff to pinpoint potential service issues through vastly reduced diagnosis time and predictive root-cause analysis.
• Roll out new services faster by collecting information instrumental in determining network readiness prior to initiation. Cisco SPA provides organizations with data before the actual traffic flows, offering visibility to the stability of the network and whether it will permit the desired service level. Launching new products and services on time and meeting customer expectations can drastically affect your new product revenues and customer loyalty.
• Realize higher productivity from complementary Cisco applications, such as Cisco Info Center, CiscoWorks, and Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA), by providing invaluable network intelligence as inputs for these assets.
• Boost return on previous investments by enhancing existing infrastructure and applications. Cisco SPA feeds real-time information to existing fault, performance, and network management solutions, such as Cisco Info Center, IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, HP TeMIP, EMC Smarts, CA Spectrum, and others. Cisco SPA helps enable these products to meet the challenges and demands of converged networks and real-time applications.
• Achieve rapid return on investment through rapid deployment, ease of use, and low training costs. Off-the-shelf Cisco SPA servers and listeners can be installed swiftly-and will immediately begin providing information about a wide range of IP network sources.
• Protect current investments by offering a highly scalable architecture. The ground-breaking three-tier architecture permits Cisco SPA to grow with the increasing demands of your organization.
Q. Is Cisco SPA a standalone solution or does it work with existing network management systems?
A. Cisco SPA drives value as a standalone solution but also could be integrated effectively with a variety of Cisco and third-party network management systems. Cisco SPA enhances the benefits of conventional network management solutions, such as performance, fault, and service management systems, by delivering:
• High-fidelity topology and service path views for use by other systems
• Ability to track subtle, transient failures that are not visible to other systems
• Ability to store and replay historical events
• Reality check on configuration management systems-helping ensure that the operational configuration is consistent with its desired intent
Cisco SPA improves return on previous investments by enhancing existing infrastructure and applications. Cisco SPA feeds real-time information to existing fault and network management solutions, such as Cisco Info Center, IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, HP TeMIP, EMC Smarts, CA Spectrum, and others.
Q. Does Cisco SPA compete with, or complement, other Cisco products, such as Cisco Info Center, CiscoWorks, and Cisco ANA?
A. Cisco SPA is completely complementary with other Cisco products. Cisco SPA facilitates higher productivity from complementary Cisco applications, such as Cisco Info Center, CiscoWorks, and Cisco ANA, by building on the strengths of these assets and providing additional network visibility.
Q. How does Cisco SPA compare with other Cisco products, such as Cisco Info Center, CiscoWorks, and Cisco ANA?
A. Cisco SPA is focused on providing a network-time, high-fidelity view of network topology, service path, and Layer 3 visible components. Furthermore, Cisco SPA automatically correlates IP faults and misconfigurations with the defined services they affect. These capabilities augment the functionality of other Cisco products.
Installation and Usage
Q. What if my Cisco SPA device fails?
A. Since Cisco SPA is not in the data path, if it fails, the capabilities delivered by Cisco SPA will not be available. All other network and application functions will be unaffected. In addition, the Cisco SPA listener is based on a distributed design with built-in redundancy.
Q. Does Cisco SPA require any special network configuration?
A. No, Cisco SPA can be installed with any network configuration.
Q. Do I need to install client software for my Cisco SPA system?
A. Yes, you will be required to install a client on a PC to be able to access the capabilities of the Cisco SPA system.
Q. What is service path analytics and why do I need it?
A. Service path analytics provides a network-time view of network topology, service paths, and many other Layer 3 visible components. Capturing routing protocols operating within an IP network and correlating that information with service performance delivers the actionable intelligence to rapidly isolate the root causes of service degradation and to minimize future network instabilities that impact service quality.
Q. What is high fidelity and why do I need it?
A. High fidelity is the ability to capture and store accurate, highly granular intelligence as events occur in network-time. Cisco SPA facilitates high fidelity for network topology and service paths using route analytics capabilities built into the product. Assuring the delivery of new services, such as voice and video, requires a network-time understanding of service paths to correlate perceived impairments in quality with infrastructure disruptions.
Q. Why are transient failures important when I have never worried about them before?
A. Transient failures are failures that are short in duration. Next-generation services, such as video, voice, interactive gaming, and real-time capital markets data distribution, place more stringent demands on the infrastructure than traditional Web and e-mail data services carried over IP networks. Transient failures were of little consequence for traditional data services but can degrade the quality of real-time IP applications. Cisco SPA helps enable network operators to detect and address these types of transient failures.
Q. Can conventional SNMP polling solutions satisfy my real-time challenges?
A. Conventional SNMP products are based on polling techniques, which effectively interrogate various elements within the network on a periodic basis. Typically, these polling cycles are tens of minutes long, effectively making the information collected outdated and of little value in situations where network-time, high-fidelity data collection is a requirement. Increasing the rate of polling is not feasible as it places a detrimental management overhead on the network and on the managed elements.
Q. Does Cisco SPA disrupt any of my ongoing network operations?
A. No. Cisco SPA is completely unobtrusive in its operation. It listens to routing information that is transmitted by network elements during the normal course of operation. It does not transmit any routing information itself.
Q. How is Cisco SPA different from other products that let me see topology and paths?
A. Cisco SPA captures and stores intelligence continuously, in network-time, and plays back the complete history of network events for any period of time.
Q. Can the information in Cisco SPA be used in other systems that I own?
A. Yes. The information can be reused by a variety of systems and Cisco applications, such as Cisco Info Center, CiscoWorks, and Cisco ANA, as well as non Cisco products, including IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, HP TeMIP, EMC Smarts, CA Spectrum, and others.
Q. Will I have to rework my existing methods and procedures if I install Cisco SPA?
A. You will not have to rework any existing methods and procedures to install and obtain immediate value from Cisco SPA. To obtain maximum value from Cisco SPA, you may wish to integrate Cisco SPA into your operational procedures. In this case, you may choose to enhance your existing methods and procedures to include the structured use of information from Cisco SPA for operational and troubleshooting purposes. Cisco can help you with this.
Q. Is Cisco SPA difficult to install?
A. Cisco SPA is delivered as a network appliance in a self-contained unit. As such, there is no software installation or OS dependency. Installation of Cisco SPA requires connecting the network appliances to suitable points in the network and providing them with simple IP network configuration information. Cisco SPA is easily installed in a short time and delivers value immediately after installation.
Q. Is Cisco SPA easy to integrate with third-party applications?
A. Cisco SPA has a variety of interfaces that facilitate such integration. Cisco can assist with integration.
Technology
Q. What protocols does Cisco SPA support?
A. Cisco SPA supports Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
Q. Will this protocol set be enhanced to support additional protocols? When?
A. Yes. Full support for Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS), Multiprotocol BGP (MP-BGP), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and several other network protocols is on the near-term road map. Precise release dates have not yet been announced.
Q. Is there patented technology underlying Cisco SPA?
A. Yes. There are four granted patents and several additional filed patent applications that form the core of Cisco SPA technology.
