WAN Testing tools

[ralph]

I've got an issue that's been driving me nuts.
I have a multi-site network, each with their own 3300s running 4.1.
All in/out bound calls route via one leg and then over IP trunks to the other sites.
One site complained about fax quality.  (T.38)

After digging into it I see a ton of packet loss.   It only appears on that one leg and there is no loss at any other site.
There is no packet loss for any calls that are on the local network - only calls going across the WAN - and a corresponding Qstats on the opposite controller does not show any loss.

The carrier says there isn't a problem on their end.   I've connected to their equipment from different switch ports on our end - no change.

So my question comes to this:   What kind of tools are available to test the WAN?    Conceivably, I'd put a laptop on either end and saturate it (preferably with simulated voice traffic).   What tools is everyone else using?

Ralph

Notes: 1: Carrier has verified that the QOS settings are working properly since they seeing it.
           2: We have no control of the routers.
           3: It's an MPLS network.  There is no firewall between the 3300's

[brantn]

Scrutinizer is a pretty decent piece of analysis software more so to see current load and such on the link.

[ralph]

Well, my initial issue seems to have been resolved.
The carrier rebooted their router and <poof> (That's a technical term - poof) no more packet loss.

Still looking for tools that would have assisted with this.
I'm wondering if there is any open source products that would do it.
Something to flood the WAN with simulated voice traffic.

Ralph

[martyn]

G'Day Ralph,
Have a look at an open source tool called iPerf. It will do exactly what you are after and report back on latency, jitter, packet loss, and bandwidth.

If you want to monitor the links then have a look in to a tool called Nagios. This along with another tool called Cacti will be able to monitor and graph the performance of the links as well as health status of the routers, switches (including individual switch ports), and pretty much anything you can think of including the 3300 itself using SNMP.

[ralph]

Thanks martyn.    I've downloaded it from sourceforge.    Runs on linux which is a small problem for me since all our laptops run Win7, but I think I can create a bootable USB stick I can put it on.

Ralph

[brantn]

Cacti is pretty cool doesnt necessarily show what the traffic is so it depends scrutinizer tells you down to the minute what traffic is flowing where. I will have to setup my cacti server to look at the 3300 and see what it shows for graphing and snmp. We use it for vlan monitoring on Cisco's and it it a pretty neat little program.

[martyn]

Thanks martyn.    I've downloaded it from sourceforge.    Runs on linux which is a small problem for me since all our laptops run Win7, but I think I can create a bootable USB stick I can put it on.

Ralph

Ah yep sorry should have said that Nagios and cacti run on Linux, but since you are probably familiar with it you could run them up on an instance of SME server (which is what MSL is built on) as the learning curve probably wouldn't be so much.

Iperf though can run on windows so at least that's an easy part of the solution!

[ralph]

Iperf though can run on windows so at least that's an easy part of the solution!

martyn,
The version I found runs on linux.   Can you provide a link?

Ralph

[martyn]

Hi Rallph,
Yep sure try here for a link and a quick run down on how to use it.

[ralph]

I just Pulled down that version.  It's 1.7.  Played with it a bit.
The latest is 2.0.   I haven't been able to find 2.0 for windows yet.


Ralph

[ralph]

Found it.
You can download the windows version here:  www.mayoxide.com/iperf/

It will run off a memory stick without having to install it.

Ralph