Analyze Efficiency with Traffic Performance Agents

Network efficiency is the percentage of bytes that were not retransmissions. A network efficiency of 100 percent means that no bytes were retransmitted — in other words, the network was highly efficient. The Network Performance Summary on the report tab is one way to check the efficiency of your link. Another way is to use a Traffic Performance agent. You can monitor the network efficiency of your Inbound and Outbound links, a specific traffic class, or all classes.

When a class' efficency dips below a certain percentage (such as 80 percent), the adaptive response feature will alert you that a threshold has been crossed. The standard alert is a red indicator on the info tab (PacketWise) or configuration tab (PolicyCenter). In addition, you can have an email, SNMP trap, or syslog message sent when the class' efficiency drops under a predefined threshold; this method requires that you create an action file — a text file of PacketWise commands. The action file can take other actions, as well, such as enabling top talkers/listeners. The action file can include any CLI command that can run without additional user input. See Action File Overviews for more information.

In order to use this feature, the adaptive response feature must be enabled and you must create an agent based on the Traffic Performance template.

Create a Traffic Performance Agent

To create a Traffic Performance agent that monitors the efficiency of one or more classes:

1. On the setup tab, click the Adaptive Response Settings link.
   
   
2. Click add. The Add Agent Entry window will open.
   
   
3. In the create a new agent from this agent template drop-down list, choose Traffic Performance.
   
   
4. Enter a unique identifying name for the new agent in the Name field, for example Inbound Efficiency or Oracle Efficiency.
   
   
5. If desired, change the evaluation interval, in minutes (how often the agent should measure its target).
   
   
6. Click OK and Edit Parms. This will open the Edit Agent Entry window where you can define the parameter values for your new agent.
   
   
7. In the ClassName field, enter the name of the class to be monitored (for example, /Inbound/Oracle). If desired, a wildcard may be used to monitor many classes (for example, /inbound* to monitor all classes in the inbound direction or * to monitor all classes).
   
   Note: This class must already exist in your traffic tree.
   
   
8. If desired, modify the threshold values:
   
   Efficiency — The percent efficiency that will cause a class to be in violation. For instance, if the Efficiency is set to 80 and the efficiency of one of the monitored classes drops below 80 percent, that class will be in violation. Assuming the RedThreshold is set to 1 (the default), the agent's status will change to red.
   
   RedThreshold — The value at which the status of the agent turns red, and a red action file is triggered, if present. For a Traffic Performance agent, this number represents an unacceptable number of violating classes; a class is in violation if it is less than the defined Efficiency percentage. For instance, if the RedThreshold is set to 1, the agent's status will change to red when at least one class had efficiency less than the defined Efficiency percent.
   
   GreenThreshold — An acceptable number of violating classes (usually 0).
   
   
9. Click OK to save your changes.

After creating the agent, you will want to monitor it to see whether the class' efficency ever dropped below the acceptable level you defined.

Check the Agent Status

To check the status of Traffic Performance agents:

1. Click the info tab. The PacketShaper’s info tab shows an icon for each agent category, and a colored status indicator for each. Traffic Performance agents are in the Network Health category (the first one).
   
   
2. To see the status of each individual agent in the Network Health category, hover your mouse over the first colored status indicator, as shown below.
   
   
   
   
3. In the pop-up window, locate the traffic performance agent that you defined. What color is its status indicator?
   
   
   Green — During the last evaluation interval, efficiency of the defined class name(s) did not drop below the Efficiency percentage you defined. In other words, traffic was efficient — few packets were dropped.
   Red — During the last evaluation interval, efficiency dropped below the defined Efficiency percentage. In other words, retransmitted packets caused inefficiency in the class(es). In this case, you may want to consider delving into this further, perhaps checking the class' response times. When the status indicator is red, you should look at the incident report for details.
   
   If the agent has ever changed status (from green/yellow to red or from red/yellow to green, a report icon with a link to a detailed report will be available for that agent.
   
   
4. If there is a report for the Traffic Performance agent, click the report icon. The incident report appears in a separate browser window and lists all the classes during the interval that had efficiency less than the specified Efficiency percentage.
   
   
   
   

Create an Action File that Sends an Email Notification

If you would like to be notified by email when classes are inefficient, you can create a command file that contains a single line: the send email command. By designating this command file as the red action file, an email will be sent when the red threshold is crossed.

Note: In order to send email notification, you must configure an SMTP server in PacketWise.

To create an action file that sends an email notification:

1. If the info tab is currently displayed, click the Settings link; otherwise, go to the setup tab and click the Adaptive Response Settings link.

2. Click the edit button next to the agent.

3. Click the browse files button. The File Browser window opens and shows the contents of the 9.258/agent/cmd directory (where action files need to be stored).

4. Click the new cmd file button. A command file window opens.

5. In the File Name field, enter a unique name for your action file up to eight characters long, including 0-9, a-z, A-Z, -,_, and . (period). Spaces are not allowed. Example: rtx-red

6. In the Contents area, enter the following commands:

#Title: red action file for Traffic Performance Agent
send email <address> "<subject>" ["<body>"]

where <address> is the email address of the recipient. For example, if the agent is monitoring all classes you can send an email notification that indicates the number of classes that were inefficient during the evaluation interval:

send email raltman@test.com "Low efficiency" "$scorevalue classes had efficency less than $Efficiency percent."

Note: If you want to send an email notification to more than one recipient, repeat the send email command for each email address.

If the agent is monitoring a single class, you can include the variables for the class name ($class-id) and the efficiency ($network-efficiency) in the <subject> or <body>, as the following example shows:

send email raltman@test.com "Low $class-id efficiency" "The efficiency for $class-id was $network-efficiency percent."

When the message is sent, the body of the email message would look something like this:

The efficiency for inbound/oracle was 79 percent.

7. Click save.

8. Enter the name of your action file in the Red Action File field (for example, rtx-red.cmd).

9. Click OK.

After the next evaluation interval, an email will be sent if and when the agent's red threshold is crossed. If you like, you can create a green action file to notify you when the agent returns to a green status.