Segment Routing Dashboard

Integrated Performance Management

IP networks inherently implement Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP), allowing traffic to be evenly distributed across multiple paths of equal cost. Integrated Performance Measurements (I-PM) offers a solution to accurately measure transport service performance across all ECMP paths for any given network path, ensuring comprehensive visibility and precise network monitoring.

Integrated Performance Measurement consists of three key components:

• Routing Analytics (CNC): Monitors the underlay routing across all ECMP paths.

• IP Measurements: Provides visibility through scalable active SLA measurements from any edge to any edge across all ECMP paths.

• Provider Connectivity Assurance: Correlates IP measurements and routing data to deliver proactive, actionable insights.

This article focuses on the features and insights enabled by Routing Analytics (see figure below).

Path Query Service (PQS)

The Path Query Service enables users to query the expected latency for a specified network path, such as from a source edge node through intermediate nodes to a destination edge node (e.g., P edge, A, B, Q edge). It provides detailed hop-by-hop minimum propagation delay performance along with the overall end-to-end expected delay performance for the queried path. This granular latency insight allows users to understand the performance characteristics and whether the network can fulfil their intent.

Network Performance Grid

The path data collected by routing analytics can be aggregated into a grid based on metadata, such as from any city edge to any other city edge. This aggregation summarizes the minimum overall delay for each path between pairs of cities, enabling macro-level network performance analysis and insights.

How It Works

1. Navigate to the Segment Routing dashboard.
   

2. Select your desired metric, metric aggregation and time interval.
   

3. Explore your entire inventory of cities.

• The blue cells represent a gradient of metric values from light blue (low metric value) to dark blue (high metric value).

• Hovering a cell will show you a line chart of the city-to-city’s metric performance over time.

• Users can select an individual cell, a column/row header, or a city on the map for more details.

City-Level Inventory and Performance

Selecting a city displays all the other cities directly connected to it.

City-to-City Segment-Level Performance

Selecting a city-to-city pair shows all paths connected between these two cities.

ECMP Path Detail Drill Down

Selecting a path allows you to explore detailed information about that path. At the top, the change in path delay over the selected time period is displayed. Below this, the path’s ECMP tree is shown, including node names and the minimum propagation delay for each hop. At the bottom, any changes in the ECMP paths are listed in a table alongside their corresponding end-to-end propagation delays.

Clicking the View Details button will open up the full details page. To learn more, see Segment Path Analytics Details.

You can select two paths from the table below to compare and analyze differences in their ECMP trees across different time stamps, as well as changes in hop-by-hop delays.

Inventory, Management and Details

This feature provides you with the ability to view and manage your segment routing inventory through an intuitive user interface. You can view and update nodes—the fundamental routing entities—and organize them into location groups such as cities, enabling you to shape your segment routing visualizations to fit your operational needs.

Users can also open the segment details to view insights and analysis of segment performance and topology changes over time.

Key Features

• List and search all provisioned nodes, cities with their corresponding underlying nodes, and segments in your routing inventory

• Bulk import and export of nodes (100+)

• Bulk import and export of locations

• Assign multiple nodes to a single city to reflect real-world groupings

• Dive into a segment’s performance and topology details over time

How It Works

The routing assets are listed under the Inventory > Assets tab. Select your preferred type of asset to view its inventory.

Nodes

These are the fundamental routing entities, for example a router on the edge of a core network. Each of these nodes has a segment to all other nodes known in the inventory. Nodes can be assigned to a location (for example a city) to group and aggregate metrics of multiple nodes to a location.

Clicking a node in the inventory list will open the sidebar where you can see more information about the node.

Exporting Node Inventory

The easiest way to update an existing node inventory is to first export it.

1. Select the Nodes tab.

2. Click the Export button in the top-right corner.

Bulk Importing Node Inventory

Import nodes by uploading a CSV file of your entire node inventory.

Note: Pre-existing nodes that are not in this new list will be deleted from the node inventory.

1. Click the + Assets dropdown in the top-right corner.

2. Select Nodes.

3. Drag a CSV into the upload area, denoted by a dotted outline (or click inside the upload area to bring up a file selector).
   

Any validation issues with the CSV will be displayed and disable the Import button. Fix the issues and reupload to retry validation and import.

Cities

The City asset is a provisioned location group for collections of nodes. This allows higher-order concepts to be materialized into metrics by aggregating underlying node metrics.

Clicking a city in the inventory list will open the sidebar where you can see more information about the city and its underlying nodes. You can also click a node in the sublist to see the node’s information.

Exporting City Location Inventory

The easiest way to update an existing location inventory is to first export it.

1. Select the Cities tab.

2. Click the Export button in the top-right.

Bulk Importing City Location Inventory

Import locations by uploading a CSV file of your entire city location inventory.

Note: Pre-existing cities that are not in this new list will be deleted from the location inventory.

1. Click the + Assets dropdown in the top-right corner.

2. Select Cities.

3. Drag a CSV into the upload area, denoted by a dotted outline (or click inside the upload area to bring up a file selector).
   

Any validation issues with the CSV will be displayed and disable the Import button. Fix the issues and reupload to retry validation and import.

Notes:

New locations will generate a unique identifier (ID) on creation. This ensures if the location name or coordinates are updated in the future, any data associated with the city is not lost.

When updating city inventory, first export the pre-existing inventory along with their corresponding location IDs.

Segments

A segment is an identified start/end link between two nodes, where key performance indicators can be tracked as well as routing changes.

There can be more elements between the start/end nodes and the routing in-between can change over time. These details can be viewed by selecting a segment and clicking Open Details to open up the path analytics details. To learn more, see Segment Path Analytics Details.