Assess MPLS Performance

In this Recommendation, you will use the Response Time Measurement (RTM) feature to determine the effectiveness of your MPLS deployment. You will define thresholds for acceptable response times of important applications and then look at RTM reports to see how well the applications are performing.

Tutorial: Assess MPLS Performance (requires Flash player)

Steps:

1. Go to the Monitor Response Time page. This report lists the traffic classes for which PacketWise tracks RTM data.

2. For each application that you want to define acceptable response times, set total delay and service level thresholds. (You can do this by clicking the class name on the Monitor Response Time page.)
   
   

3. Let your traffic run for enough time to have PacketWise measure its performance — an hour, a week, it's up to you and your traffic load.
   

4. Examine the Monitor Response Time report again. For those classes that you defined thresholds, compare the Threshold column against the Total Average Transaction Delay column. Look at the Good % column to see what percentage of transactions had an acceptable delay.
   
   
5. To get a picture of how the class is performing, view the RTM graphs. (You can just click the icon in the Graphs column)
   
   
6. In addition, you may want to create graphs showing each class' utilization and efficiency.

See also:

Analyze an Application's Behavior

Analyze an Application's Response Time