Cisco Voice Network Management Solutions

This section describes what Cisco network management applications you can use to manage Cisco IPC Express systems. Some of these solutions might not manage Cisco IPC Express features directly but might facilitate the management of the underlying voice network.

Cisco offers management tools that dramatically reduce the cost of operating a network. By providing tools that reduce human intervention in the initial deployment of network hardware and ongoing maintenance, network management helps decrease human error and increases the total number of devices that a single person can manage. Cisco provides network management tools to help SPs and enterprise customers manage their data and voice networks. The network management options are via either the CLI for standalone sites or automated NMSs for large networks.

The NMS solution is an automated service deployment option that uses integrated network management devices to provide fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security (FCAPS) management support. Because a Cisco IPC Express system runs as part of the Cisco IOS voice-enabled router, all the existing Cisco Voice Network Management systems are applicable, including the following:

• CiscoWorks QoS Policy Manager (QPM)
• CiscoWorks Resource Manager Essentials (RME)
• Internetwork Performance Monitor
• Cisco Voice Manager and Telemate

The next sections describe each of these systems in more detail.

CiscoWorks QoS Policy Manager

CiscoWorks QoS Policy Manager (QPM) is a management tool for QoS policy creation, deployment, and monitoring. It provides rules-based policy guidance plus templates (designed by Cisco or customized by users) to streamline QoS management. It improves efficiencies by administering QoS for IP telephony across the entire network using step-by-step wizards and templates based on Cisco design recommendations. CiscoWorks QPM enforces network-wide services such as low latency, as well as fast response for VoIP, video, and other applications, such as SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft.

CiscoWorks Resource Manager Essentials

CiscoWorks Resource Manager Essentials (RME) is an infrastructure tool for full-service branch management. It helps streamline a network's daily operations. The CiscoWorks RME browser interface allows easy access to information critical to network uptime and simplifies time-consuming administrative tasks. The Management Connection feature in CiscoWorks RME adds web integration of other management tools from Cisco and partner companies. Therefore, you can use these tools and applications to create a seamless central point of network administration. CiscoWorks RME includes the following components:

• Inventory Manager Manages inventory of the devices
• Change Audit Tracks changes made to each managed device
• Device Configuration Manager Manages device configuration
• Software Image Manager Manages software images installed on devices
• Availability Manager Displays device availability
• Syslog Analyzer Analyzes Syslog messages
• Cisco Management Connection Allows integration with other management tools

CiscoWorks Internetwork Performance Monitor

CiscoWorks Internetwork Performance Monitor (IPM) is a network response time and availability troubleshooting application. It lets network engineers proactively troubleshoot network-wide performance to diagnose congestion and latency problems using real-time and historic statistics.

As enterprise networks continue to grow in size, scope, and strategic importance, network managers face numerous challenges in maintaining their networks' performance and availability. Furthermore, as enterprises deploy new network applications and services, such as VoIP and streaming video, measurements of network performance must be able to recognize different levels of service based on these different types of network traffic.

CiscoWorks IPM helps meet these challenges by performing proactive network response-time measurement. With CiscoWorks IPM, network managers have the tools they need to isolate performance problems, locate bottlenecks, diagnose latency and jitter, and perform trend analysis of network response time. Furthermore, CiscoWorks IPM can perform path and hop performance analysis between virtually any two points in an IP-based network. IPM removes the guesswork from response-time problem diagnosis, thereby helping network managers be proactive in providing the appropriate level of network response time to their users.

Cisco Voice Manager and Telemate

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard G.113 specifies how to measure voice quality by calculating the Calculated Planning Impairment Factor (ICPIF) value.

Cisco IOS voice-enabled routers can calculate an ICPIF value for every call, and log it in the CDR records and the CISCO-VOICE-DIAL-CONTROL-MIB. In addition, the routers can send a quality of voice (QoV) trap via SNMP if a call's ICPIF value exceeds a preset value. This means that the voice-enabled routers have built-in voice quality measurement abilities. An NMS can then collect these measurements, and analyze the data to identify trends. VoIP voice quality is mainly affected by network QoS. Therefore, the call analysis focuses on identifying voice quality problems on a per-site basis. If you can identify sites that have a large number of calls with poor voice quality, you can focus on any QoS issues in the network path to and from those sites.

Cisco Voice Manager (CVM) and Telemate provide monitoring and reporting capabilities for voice quality in large-scale IP networks. Voice quality reporting uses the ICPIF value calculated by the Cisco IOS voice-enabled routers for each call, which allows the network manager to identify sites that suffer from poor voice quality and take appropriate steps to correct them.

Cisco CVM and Telemate are two separate applications. Cisco CVM is a Cisco developed product, and Telemate is a product by a separate vendor that Cisco bundles with Cisco CVM. Cisco CVM collects CDRs from the router and receives QoV SNMP traps from the gateways. Cisco CVM then sends this information to Telemate, which processes this information and stores it in a Microsoft SQL database, listing calls with their respective details, including the ICPIF value. You can run various reports against the database, including QoV reports. You can use Telemate's Packet Voice Calls with a Quality of Service Traps report listing all calls for which the gateway generated a QoV trap to identify which site suffers from voice quality issues.

Managing Cisco IPC Express with Cisco Partner Applications