SD-WAN Application QOS Test

The SD-WAN network between the data center and branch offices transports a multitude of applications and data, such as high quality video or real-time voice. The SD-WAN network provides guaranteed, secure, measurable, and predictable services by managing the delay, jitter, bandwidth, and packet loss on the network. To achieve this and accelerate the traffic over the network, administrators define Quality of service (QoS) policies on the target SD-WAN appliance. The SD-WAN appliance has a sophisticated QoS engine that accesses the application traffic and prioritizes the traffic against other applications. With the QoS policies, administrators can set priority to critical traffic and control the traffic flow based on the requirements for WAN network quality. This way, administrators can prevent bandwidth hogging, and manage network bottlenecks to prevent data loss and packet drops. If the appliance is not configured with the right QoS policies, slowdowns during application accesses will become inevitable! To avoid this, administrators should continuously monitor the data/packet transmission performed based on each QoS policy, quickly identify the data/packet loss, and proceed to fine-tune the policies to ensure optimal performance. This is where the SD-WAN Application QoS test helps.

For each QoS policy, this test reports the amount of data transmitted to/from the LAN and WAN and the number of packets transmitted to/from the LAN and WAN. Using this revelation, administrators can measure how well the target appliance is managing the traffic over the WAN and LAN links based on the QoS policies, thus pointing to those policies that may require fine-tuning. This test also reports the amount of data and the number of packets dropped during the transmission, thus shedding light on the data/packet loss during the transmission at the earliest.

Target of the test : A Citrix SD-WAN

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each global data center:data center: QoS policy defined on the target Citrix SD-WAN appliance being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed. By default, this is set to 5 minutes.

Host

The IP address of the target SD-WAN appliance for which this test is to be configured.

Port

Refers to the port at which the target SD-WAN listens to. By default, this will be NULL.

Timeout

Specify the time duration (in seconds) beyond which this test should time out in the Timeout text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Detailed Diagnosis

To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
  • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

LAN to WAN data transmission

Indicates the amount of data transmitted over the LAN to WAN link based on this QoS policy during the last measurement period.

MB

An unusually high value of this measure may indicate a potential congestion or slowdown of traffic over the LAN to WAN link. It also indicates that you may have to reconfigure the appliance with more robust QoS policies to prevent such unpleasant eventualities.

LAN to WAN packet transmission

Indicates the number of packets transmitted over the LAN to WAN link based on this policy during the last measurement period.

Packets

  

WAN to LAN data transmission

Indicates the amount of data transmitted over the WAN to LAN link based on this policy during the last measurement period.

MB

A very high value of this measure may indicate a potential congestion or slowdown of traffic over the WAN to LAN link. It also indicates that you may have to reconfigure the appliance with more robust QoS policies to prevent such unpleasant eventualities.

WAN to LAN packet transmission

Indicates the number of packets transmitted over the WAN to LAN link based on this policy during the last measurement period.

Packets

  

Data dropped

Indicates the amount of data dropped during the data transmission between the LAN and WAN based on this policy.

MB

The value of this measure should be zero.

Packets dropped

Indicates the number of packets dropped during the packet transmission between the LAN and WAN based on this policy.

Packets

Ideally, there should be no packet drops during transmission. An increase in the value of this measure is an indicator that the appliance may not be able to service the traffic over the network.