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14.1.10 CiscoPING measurement servers

The Cisco PING measurement server is an active and non-discoverable PVSR module. The measurement server takes into account both the timeout and retries values set for the equipment. Beside the basic attributes, the equipment has the following additional parameters (the code of the parameter is given in parenthesis; see Subsection 7.5.6 on Parameters of non-SNMP data collectors):

  • IP address (RPING EQ 1 IP): Single line text field, which cannot be seen by non-administrators. It contains the IP address of the equipment, similarly to normal SNMP equipment
  • Community (RPING EQ 2 COMM): Single line text field, which cannot be seen by non-administrators. The field contains the password of the equipment community, similarly to SNMP equipment, if it is not specified, then it is interpreted as public
  • SNMP version (RPING EQ 3 SNMP): A drop down field, which cannot be seen by non-administrators. The field contains the version of the SNMP used for the query (SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c)
  • Delete RPING MIB results (RPING EQ 4 DELRES): Checkbox field, which cannot be seen by non-administrators. If checked, then the values are deleted from the Cisco equipment after each measurement. If it is not checked, then this is performed by the equipment itself after some time.
  • Default values for the measurements: These values can be specified also at the measurements. Even though they are optional there, all of them, except the VRF, are mandatory here. If a value is not specified at the measurement, then the value specified at the equipment is used. The codes of both the equipment and the measurement parameter are given in parenthesis. None of the parameters are visible for non-administrators, and with the exception of VRF all fields are integers and have default values at the equipment
    • Base ping count (RPING EQ 4 PC and RPING M 2 PC): How many ping packets should be sent in a cycle (5 by default)
    • Base ping size (byte) (RPING EQ 5 PS and RPING M 3 PS): The size of the packet (100 by default)
    • Base ping timeout (millisecond) (RPING EQ 6 TIMEOUT and RPING M 4 TIMEOUT): The allowed timeout of the packets in milliseconds (2000 by default)
    • Base ping delay (millisecond) (RPING EQ 7 DELAY and RPING M 5 DELAY): In how many milliseconds should a new packet be sent after the previous one is received or has reached its timeout (0 by default)
    • Base VRF (RPING EQ 8 VRF and RPING M 6 VRF): The VRF name of the transmitted packets.

 

There is an additional measurement parameter, although its default value cannot be set at the equipment level. Its name is Timing (RPING M 7 TIMING). It can be used to specify the data collection periods when the collection actually should occur. More than one element can be specified, separated with ";". Each element can have at maximum three filters which must be separated by commas: days, hours and minutes, in the filter specified as: D, H, M. The condition must be specified with the "=" charater. For days the value range is between 1 (Monday) and 7 (Saturday). The range is 0..23 for hours and 0..59 for minutes. The data collector collects the data when the Timing parameter is empty or when one of its elements matches the current time. Example values:

ˇ       D=2,H=12,M=0: only on every Tuesday noon runs the application the ping operation

ˇ       H=3,M=25;M=0: only every day at 03:25 am. and at every whole hour runs the application the ping operation

When the measurement doesn't take place then obviously there won't be any meaurement values, i.e. the measurement chart will have a gray background.

 

Since the Cisco PING measurement server is non-discoverable, the individual measurements must be created one-by-one with the use interface. The measurement server expects the Index parameter to be the IP address of the equipment to be pinged.

 

For Cisco PING measurement server types, the measurement definitions can use only a predefined set of variables. The default measurement definitions are based on these, but naturally these can be modified freely. The variable names are the following:

  • Table variables: In measurement definitions they are referenced typically as #VARIABLE.PORT# or #VARIABLE.IDENTIFIER#, but naturally their .PRE form can be also used:
    • SENT: The number of sent packets
    • RCVD: The number of received packets
    • COMPLETED: Is the ping measurement completed; its value can be 1 (yes) or 2 (no). The later can happen if during the measurement cycle the Cisco equipment could not send out all the measurements. E.g.: if the timeout is 2000, the delay is 1000, 30 packets need to be sent, the measurement cycle is 1 minute, but the IP address cannot be pinged, then the router needs approximately 1.5 minutes to complete, but the PVSR will terminate the measurement after 1 minute.
    • RTTMIN: The minimum RTT value
    • RTTAVG: The average RTT value
    • RTTMAX: The maximum RTT value

 

The measurement times created at installation:

  • RPING RTT: Contains the average RTTAVG value
  • RPING RTT MinMax: Contains both the RTTMIN and RTTMAX values
  • RPING Availability: Availability as a percentage based on the SENT, RCVD and COMPLETED values:
    • If COMPLETED is 1, that is the measurement is completed, then its value is RCVD/SENT*100
    • If COMPLETED is 2, that is the measurement was not completed, and at least two packets were sent, then RCVD/(SENT-1)*100

 

A chart template is also created that combines the three RTT values in a single chart.

 

As can be seen above, the Cisco PING measurement server does not provide UPTIME data.

 

The collector specific pages mentioned in section 14.1.2 SNMP measurement servers can be also used for these equipments, except the Processes and the Disks pages.