The Project

Our client, a global bank headquartered in Europe, migrated to a new Voice over IP (VoIP)
managed service across their global VoIP footprint of 8 sites and 4000 handsets. Following the
upgrade, users started reporting intermittent call quality issues. There were several pain points:
1 High impact service deterioration. Poor VoIP quality had affected several high-prole calls,
increasing the pressure on the IT organisation to resolve the issues quickly and effectively.
1 A lack of transparency and visibility. Ambiguity and confusion as to whether the root cause
was due to the VoIP system or the supporting network infrastructure.
1 Inadequate tool capability. The service provider was unable to determine the root cause of
problems using their existing tools that focused on faults and availability monitoring
The client then decided to try a more holistic monitoring solution. They selected CorvilNet for
its ability to integrate network, infrastructure and service provider performance visibility with
an understanding of the demands for voice, video, web, storage and database applications.
The Solution
A Corvil CNE-6300 appliance was deployed in each data center, bundled with Corvils
Operational Performance Monitoring software. The solution conguration included:
1 Base Network Performance Monitoring appliance, including packet capture and
comprehensive network analytics out of the box.
1 An Enterprise Application decoder pack, with support for VoIP media and control protocols
including H.225, H.245 and SIP signalling, plus RTP, RTCP and RSVP. Auto-discovery of VoIP
trafc and full application layer visibility of control trafc and media trafc.
1 Corvil Lens, providing intuitive real-time monitoring of VoIP performance by gatekeeper
and site, plus a network view showing MPLS network trafc, broken down by class of
service between each site.
The Project
Voice over IP (VoIP) Monitoring
Challenges
High exposure outages and poor
quality are immediately noticed
Shared infrastructure affects
quality and complicates analysis
Intermittent problems root cause
hard to determine
Scale thousands of handsets,
dozens of sites
Why Corvil
Single platform for VoIP and regular
traffc control & media, network
and application
Trusted independent monitoring
to hold VoIP and network service
providers to account
Rapid troubleshooting complete
capture with details of call quality,
control trafc and the network
context
Always-on one-way latency and
loss measurements, plus interframe
jitter and shaper-detection, backed
up with 100% packet capture
Scalability distributed system,
processing millions of packets and
business messages per second, with
zero impact on the infrastructure
Benets
Hold service providers to account
and improve their responsiveness
when issues occur
Rapid problem resolution ability
to identify the root cause of issues
to the VoIP application-layer or to
the network
Holistic Operational Performance
Monitoring solution supporting
VoIP plus web, storage, database
and network services
Increased effciency and greater
consensus between departments,
including the causes of network
and application performance issues
Quantifable cost beneft analysis
target infrastructure upgrades with
accurate performance baselining
and trending
Monitoring Voice over IP
Figure 1: Corvil VoIP monitoring rollout comprised a Corvil CNE-6300 appliance in each gatekeeper
site, monitoring control and media trafc between sites globally, including the latency and loss
point to point across the service provider.
PSTN
Gatekeeper
Data Centre
Branch
Branch
Branch
Corvil 6300 VoIP Other Apps
SERVICE
PROVIDER
Corvil Lens for real-time VoIP
monitoring and alerting
1 Flexible monitoring hierarchy, for
example summarized by gatekeeper
and by site with per-element
breakdown.
2 MOS quality metrics.
3 Monitor gaps in media trafc at any
point in the network, plus compare to
service provider packet loss.
4 Monitor Jitter based on RTP
inter-frame variation, and compare
to point-to-point latency variation.
Click through from Lens to query
per-packet metrics and details of
control trafc ow.
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This solution provided:
1 A single platform with full decode and visibility of application
ows including VoIP control and media trafc, plus web
services, storage and database protocols and network
management protocols.
1 Full network analysis, including microburst, top talkers,
listeners, conversations, TCP metrics, packet capture and
export, etc.
1 Long term reporting for performance-aware capacity planning
and trending.
1 Efcient workows for moving from an intuitive high level
performance view of the entire installation to the right level of
detail for effective troubleshooting.
The VoIP team could monitor performance from each data
center to each site, and swiftly rank by any of the measured
metrics, including:
1 Call quality metrics such as MOS (mean opinion score) and
internal/external R factors
1 Inter-packet jitter and missing RTP packets as reported by
receiving handsets
1 Inter-packet jitter and missing RTP packets as measured in
the network
1 Point to point latency, jitter and loss between sites across the
service provider cloud
The team could also access the complete ow of control trafc,
search for individual gatekeepers, handsets, and calls, and see the
complete network context.
Ranking by jitter, the team quickly saw that call quality
degradation was associated with two particular gatekeepers,
which were introducing excessive jitter. With integrated network
monitoring they could compare the jitter at different points,
to conrm that the network was not the source: the jitter was
present in the trafc leaving the gatekeeper, before accessing the
WAN. They generated detailed gatekeeper reports and used these
to follow up with the VoIP service provider. With this information,
the problem was quickly identied as a bug and resolved with a
software upgrade from the service provider. Ongoing monitoring
conrmed the problem was xed.
Additionally, they discovered a miscongured router at one site
was marking streaming video trafc with the priority Expedited
Forwarding EF label. This resulted in uncontrolled drops accessing
the service provider cloud whenever the video trafc was active.
With Corvil they quickly identied this problem and used Corvil
bandwidth sizing to achieve the required quality levels.
Benets
Monitor all trafc, not one application in isolation
Monitoring VoIP on its own will not resolve problems when those
problems are caused by VoIP interaction with other trafc at key
network nodes.
Early Warning
Get real-time alerts on deteriorating performance such as
increasing levels of jitter and loss, before they have a signicant
impact on perceived call quality.
Microvisibility
VoIP performance depends on events measured in milliseconds.
Unlike ow-based and call-based monitoring tools, CorvilNet
gives you a direct view of the short timescale behaviour of
networks and applications, letting you see and understand the
microburst events that cause jitter and packet loss.
Service Provider SLA Management
Visibility of the latency and loss of every VoIP packet across the
WAN, allows service provider issues to be immediately detected
and authoritatively conrmed. Multi-class SLAs can be monitored
and enforced.
Rapid Root Cause Analysis and Troubleshooting
With combined application and network views performance
issues are quickly detected. All troubleshooting teams use
the same high-integrity dataset, improving collaboration and
time-to-resolve. WAN issues can be authoritatively identied,
improving responsiveness of Service Provider support.
Single Platform Serves Multiple Teams
Customized dashboards for each team, showing both live and
historical data. For example, the VoIP team can view call quality
while the network team monitors packet latency and loss and
service-provider SLAs. This allows teams to operate independently
and yet still collaborate efciently.
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