Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors Data Sheet

Data Sheet

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Updated:June 17, 2024

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Updated:June 17, 2024
 

 

Cisco® Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors (formerly Accedian Skylight Sensors) form a physical or virtual instrumentation layer for Provider Connectivity Assurance, a proactive service assurance solution that provides granular, real-time, and service-centric visibility to communications service providers, enterprises, and public sector organizations, enabling them to monitor and assure their owned or leased network infrastructure, services, and connectivity.

Product overview

Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors are used to gain granular and precise insights into network connectivity and performance by either injecting synthetic test traffic (active testing) or sampling existing traffic (passive testing). Depending on the sensor type, services ranging from Layer 2 to Layer 7 can be monitored 24/7/365 to prove compliance with Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) or to detect deviations from baseline results. The sensors feed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the Provider Connectivity Assurance analytics engine, which scales to billions of KPIs per day.

To instrument various types of networks, the Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors come in different form factors, both software and hardware. This data sheet describes the software-based sensor options:

     Sensor Agents: Containerized (Cloud-native Network Function [CNF]) test agents are lightweight, software-based active test points. Agents include Actuate, Throughput, Trace, and Transfer.

     Sensor Control: Virtual machine (Virtual Network Function [VNF]) high-performance test system for large-scale, software-based active testing.

     Sensor Capture: Virtual machine (VNF) high-performance test systems for large-scale, software-based passive traffic and application monitoring.

     Sensor SFPs and Modules: Physical (Physical Network Function [PNF]) high-accuracy and wire-speed pluggable test points for large-scale and high-bandwidth tests, used to physically distribute test points for the Capture software sensor.

Any combination of sensors can be used, depending on the use case, network topology, and scaling requirements of the user. For automated provisioning, test functions are available via APIs and can be integrated into an existing workflow system or with the Cisco Crosswork® Network Automation platform (Cisco Crosswork Network Controller and Network Services Orchestrator (NSO)).

Pluggable hardware sensor options can serve as an optional physical instrumentation layer for the Sensor Control software. The hardware sensors leveraging the Sensor Control software are the Assurance Sensor SFPs and Sensor Modules. More information about these sensors can be found in their respective data sheets.

Features and benefits

Table 1.           Features and benefits of Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors: Agents, Capture, Control

Feature

Benefit

Service-centric visibility

Real-time visibility of end-to-end network and service performance to quickly identify and resolve issues, minimizing the impact of downtime on the end-customer experience.

Standards-based test and measurement support

Scalable and proven industry standards-based test and measurement. Standards-based test support of IETF RFC5357, ITU-T Y.1731, and IEEE 802.1 to leverage built-in responders in already deployed infrastructure.

400+ metrics and 50+ performance KPIs monitored

Large set of monitored and tested performance KPIs addressing connectivity, quality, and performance.

Granular accuracy and reporting

Microsecond KPI accuracy and millisecond reporting granularity offer best-in-class visibility detail of service quality.

Open APIs

Open APIs for sensor and test configuration supporting both REST and RESTCONF/YANG (integrated with Cisco Crosswork Network Controller and NSO).

Automated assurance

Real-time metrics feeds and alerts, enabling fully automated and closed-loop assurance use cases.

Prominent feature

Assured connectivity, everywhere

Instrumenting the “point of interest” is vital for accurate network and service assurance. The sensors should be deployed at the precise location and layer, physically or virtually, where the visibility is desired, and the back-end metrics collection and analytics can scale with the size of the deployment to maintain real-time dashboards and alerting functions.

The Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance platform is built to scale, providing multiple options for sensor deployment, and can be fully automated and integrated with Cisco or third-party workflow engines.

Flexible deployment options:

     Pure software sensors for x86/ARM architectures supporting automated deployment with Docker tools or Kubernetes Helm charts

     Software (VM) plus Network Interface Card (NIC) hardware assist for high-accuracy timestamping

     Horizontally scalable for large hub-and-spoke and mesh-type assurance scenarios

     Option to use pluggable hardware (Assurance Sensor SFPs or Sensor Modules) to instrument existing infrastructure, either in-line with the service or out-of-line on a spare port

     Option to use larger form-factor hardware sensors

Real-time visibility:

     Users can create custom dashboards with custom widgets for the presentation of real-time service performance insights and reporting.

     Leverage Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to help ensure that the right user groups see the data they are supposed to see.

Platform support

Table 2.           Assurance Sensor deployment support and high-level feature set

Assurance Sensor

Platforms supported

Feature sets supported

Agents

Docker, Kubernetes x86, and ARM

Layer 3 Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP), ECHO, Traceroute, TCP throughput, HTTP(s)

Capture

VMware, KVM

Layer 4 to Layer 7 in-memory real-time flow analysis

Control

VMware, KVM

Layer 2 to Layer 4 Ethernet operations, administration

SFP (hardware with Sensor Control)

SFP 1G / 10G

Layer 2 to Layer 4 ETH-OAM, TWAMP, ECHO, wire-speed Y.1564, passive metering

Modules (hardware with Sensor Control)

Standalone 1G/10G 2-port

L2-L4 ETH-OAM, TWAMP, ECHO, wire speed Y.1564, passive metering

Licensing

Software sensors do not require any licenses. The sensors are included in the following Provider Connectivity Assurance platform RTU licenses.

Table 3.           Provider Connectivity Assurance platform licenses

Description

PID

Essentials RTU License

SKY-ESS-RTU

Advantage RTU License

SKY-ADV-RTU

In addition to the RTU, licenses are needed per test session.

Table 4.           Provider Connectivity Assurance test session and flow licenses

Description

PID

Comments

Essentials Test Sessions Software License

SKY-ESS-TEST

Test session if you are using a Essentials RTU license for active testing

Advantage Test Sessions Software License

SKY-ADV-TEST

Test session if you are using a Advantage RTU license for active testing

Advantage Flow SW Lic - incl. 100K Flow Analysis per minute

SKY-ADV-FLOW

Flows for Assurance Sensor Capture

Advantage Telemetry software license

SKY-ADV-TELEM

License for telemetry ingestion

Product specifications

Table 5.           Assurance Sensor characteristics and capabilities

Sensor type and feature

Capacity

Sensor Agent Actuate – RFC5357 TWAMP Light/TWAMP Control

500 sessions – 5000 pps per agent

Sensor Agent Actuate – RFC862 UDP/ICMP Echo

500 sessions – 5000 pps per agent

Sensor Agent Throughput – RFC6349

1 test actively running, scheduling capability for sequence of tests

Sensor Agent Transfer – TCP L7 – HTTPS/FTP/TCP

250 sequentially executed, or scheduled

Sensor Agent Trace – Traceroute layer 3

1 test actively running, scheduling capability for sequence of tests

Sensor Capture

Over 5,000 applications that can be detected and classified

Sensor Control – RFC5357 TWAMP Light/TWAMP Control

4,000 sessions – 80,000 pps per instance

Sensor Control – RFC862 UDP/ICMP Echo

4,000 sessions – 80,000 pps per instance

Sensor Control – ITU-T Y.1731, IEEE 802.1ag ETH-DM, ETH-LB, ETH-VS

4,000 sessions – 80,000 pps per instance

Key active performance test types using Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors

Using the Assurance Sensors, the Provider Connectivity Assurance platform provides the following measurements and testing capability including:

     TWAMP: Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol

     ETH-DM: Ethernet Delay Measurement

     ETH-LB: Ethernet Loop Back

     ICMP Echo: Internet Control Message Protocol Echo

     UDP Echo: User Datagram Protocol Echo

     ETH-VS: Ethernet Vendor Specific

     TCP throughput (RFC 6349)

     Traceroute

KPIs include:

1.     Continuous SLA-type monitoring (Sensor Agent Actuate and Sensor Control)

One-way delay, PDV, and IPDV (jitter)

     Min/max/average

     Median (p50)

     Percentile 25/75/95/96/98/99

     Standard deviation

One-way packet statistics

     Packets lost (number and %)

     Loss bursts min / max

     Reordered packets (number and %)

     Packets duplicated (number and %)

One-way packet field and QoS metrics

     IP TOS max (DSCP diffserv)

     IP TOS min

     TTL max/min

     MOS / R-value

2.     Continuous passive application monitoring (Sensor Capture)

Protocol layers parsed

     arp

     bootp

     cifs

     citrix

     citrix_channels

     databases

     dce_rpc

     dhcp

     dns

     email

     ftp

     http / http2

     icmp

     ipsec

     kerberos

     ldap

     non-ip

     other-ip

     rdp

     smb

     socks5

     sql

     ssh

     tcp

     tls

     udp

     vnc

     voip

Applications recognized and categorized for performance and bandwidth analysis

     5000+ common SaaS applications (cloud services)

     Custom application definition filters

3.     Scheduled or one-shot active test KPIs (Sensor Agents Transfer, Throughput, and Trace)

     DNS lookup time

     HTTP(s) / FTP / TCP service response time

     Asset download time

     TCP throughput uplink / downlink

     TCP window size variation

     Path RTT (during TCP test)

     Traceroute hop IP, DNS name

     Traceroute hop count, path change

See more in Technical Documentation.

System requirements

Table 6.           Sensor Agent minimum requirements

Feature

Description

Disk space

100 MB

CPU

0.05 CPU

Memory

200 MB

Software

Docker 22.05 or later on x86-64 or ARM64

The above are minimum requirements; see the release notes for the Sensor Agents for different scaling options.

Table 7.           Sensor Capture minimum requirements

Feature

Description

Disk space

4 GB

CPU

2 cores

Memory

8 GB

Software

KVM (libvirt) or VMware ESXi 6.5 or later

The above are minimum requirements; see the release notes for Sensor Capture for different scaling options.

Table 8.           Sensor Control minimum requirements

Feature

Description

Disk space

10 GB

CPU

1 core

Memory

4 GB

Software

KVM (libvirt) or VMware ESXi 6.5 or later

Above are minimum requirements, see release notes for Sensor Control for different scaling options.

Ordering information

To order the Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance platform, please visit the Cisco Ordering homepage.

All software Assurance Sensors are included in the platform RTU licenses.

Table 9.           Provider Connectivity Assurance platform licenses

Description

PID

Essentials RTU License

SKY-ESS-RTU

Advantage RTU License

SKY-ADV-RTU

Warranty information

Technical support plus software updates are included with subscription software.

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For more information

Do you have blind spots in your observability? Do you have critical applications and services you are managing and prefer a more proactive approach to management rather than a reactive one? The Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance platform offers a range of Assurance Sensor options that can meet your needs, providing granular visibility and monitoring that will enhance your approach to assuring digital experiences. For additional information, visit cisco.com.

 

 

 

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