NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer 7.4 and QoS Validation

By John Mao
We recently released NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer 7.4. This new version was originally conceived as a maintenance release but after talking with customers, we thought it was a good idea to update some QoS policy-related features.
Part of the overall value proposition for ReporterAnalyzer is the ability to validate QoS implementation. Many companies want to monitor what applications, hosts, and conversations are within a particular class of service.
When you start to implement QoS policies, one of the problems you will face is that you may not know if there are any misconfigurations in the network. That could mean that mission-critical applications might be competing with non-critical traffic because it was placed in the wrong service level, or VoIP might not get the low latency and high reliability of the higher service levels.
In previous versions of ReporterAnalyzer, we didn’t have the ability to look at unmarked or “default” best effort levels of service for traffic – a service value called “TOS 0.” A main goal of this release was to deliver that functionality.
With the new release of ReporterAnalyzer 7.4, you now have the ability to quickly look at your top five classes of services, and if you don’t see a particular application, you can drill in to TOS 0 to see if that application shows up in the default traffic where it’s unmarked. If you do see it there, there’s a very good chance there’s a misconfiguration on that particular router for that interface where that application is not being flagged or marked appropriately.
Beyond that, we added the ability to support sFlow, a technology very similar to Cisco IOS® NetFlow, Cisco’s flow statistic reporting mechanism. We included the ability to do this on HP devices, initially. Our goal is to expand ReporterAnalyzer to accept and receive all sorts of flow data from other vendors, and we’re working on getting certified for IPFix. These are small steps we’re taking to get to that grander vision of moving beyond being the standard for NetFlow reporting to becoming the standard in traffic analysis reporting.
ReporterAnalyzer 7.4 should become generally available in the next few weeks after we get some support feedback from early adopters.
John Mao is Product Manager at NetQoS
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More information:
On NetFlow Monitoring