How Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Works

Step 1: Instrument

Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors can deployed strategically across the critical network to either generate synthetic or passive performance data.

Synthetic Testing

• Active (or synthetic) testing is the process of injecting packets into the network that emulate real traffic and allow for the proactive detection of issues before it impacts end users
• Assurance sensors are available in hardware and software form factors, and capable of testing across layers 2 through 7
• They generate incredibly granular, precise performance data that enables the detection of even the most fleeting issues like micro-bursts

Passive Monitoring

• Through real time packet analysis, performance insights on network transactions can be recorded
• This provides operations teams with the ability to investigate actual user issues to help identify if poor experiences are due to client, server or the network itself.

Step 2: Collect

Beyond Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor data, the solution can be extended to collect telemetry and fault information from the network.

Telemetry

• Any time series data source can have its data ingested into Provider Connectivity Assurance using the provided telegraf based Telemetry Collector
• This enables extensible collection over a variety of protocols and formats

Faults

• Events can be collected from network devices for correlation in Provider Connectivity Assurance with network performance monitoring data over SNMP

Step 3: Analyze

Once collected, the Provider Connectivity Assurance analytics tool set allows users to build custom meaningful dashboards to oversee network operations from a high level, and drill down using specialized workflows to investigate issues. Automated insights can also be sent northbound as alerts or metric feeds for cross domain correlation.