Although the Executive Summary and the Complete VoIP Readiness Assessment reports contain introductory and explanatory text, the following topics in this section provide a few helpful tips for understanding the various charts and tables, as well as the data and device readiness metrics you see.
Vivinet Assessor invokes Microsoft Word and Excel to interact with the database and produce charts, graphs, and detailed explanations of the data in a formatted report. It may take some time to compile and generate a report, depending on the size of your assessment and the amount of data collected.
Although you can create your own custom reports by reading an assessment database using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express, another option is to edit the Complete Report in Microsoft Word after it is generated, removing the sections you do not need from the Word document. For more information, see Section 10.1, Using SQL Server Management Studio Express.
For more information, see the following topics:
Before generating a report in Microsoft Word, check your Word security settings. Vivinet Assessor cannot generate reports unless your settings allow templates from a trusted source.
To configure your security settings in Microsoft Word 2007 and later versions:
In Word, click the Microsoft Office button, and then click Word Options.
Click Trust Center, and then click Trust Center Options.
Select Enable all macros.
Click OK.
Reports automatically use the Windows date format configured on your computer. For example, if you selected one of the “Short Date Formats” for dates in your Windows Regional settings, Vivinet Assessor reports will show “15-Oct-02” or “15-10-02,” depending on which format you selected.
To change the format:
Navigate to the Control Panel and double-click Regional Options.
Click the Date tab. Click Customize on the Regional Options dialog box to see the Date tab.
Select Short Date Format or Long Date Format from the lists, and click Apply. But be aware that the “Long Date Formats” might not wrap neatly in most Excel data tables. To get “15-Oct-02,” select the Short format dd-MMM-yy.
If report footers are not printing correctly, the problem may be that your printer has a bottom edge requirement that is greater than the “From edge” setting for footers configured in the Microsoft Word report template. The template by default supplies a value for the “From edge: Footer” setting.
To prevent footers from being cut off by your printer:
From the report document, click Page Setup on the File menu.
On the Margins tab, find the Footer field and increase the value slightly.
In the Apply To list, select Whole Document.
Print a test page to make sure you increased the footer distance enough for your printer.
During the Utilization assessment, Vivinet Assessor rates the VoIP readiness of individual monitored components. The VoIP readiness ratings Vivinet Assessor assigns are derived from result ranges you can configure, and they comprise four categories:
|
Category |
Explanation |
|---|---|
|
Good (green) |
At least 99.00% of collected measurements rated Good. Component is voice-ready, or else device or call-quality statistics are within acceptable parameters. |
|
Acceptable (yellow) |
At least 98.00% of collected measurements rated Good or Acceptable. Reconfiguration or an upgrade is necessary to achieve voice compliance or good call quality. |
|
Poor (red) |
Any lower value. The device or link may not be ready to carry additional VoIP traffic.Component is not voice-ready, or else device or call-quality statistics are not within acceptable parameters. |
|
Unavailable (black) |
No results were available to report. |
In the VoIP Readiness Assessment reports, the colors are assigned to routers, switches, and links based on the Utilization assessment. Note that they correspond to the colors that are used to report the Call Quality results of the VoIP Quality assessment. For more information, see Section 8.5, Reviewing VoIP Quality Assessment Factors.
Readiness ratings are based on the result ranges you configured for Device and Link Readiness. For more information, see Section 7.8.1, Setting Result Ranges.
Just like jitter, delay, and lost data, call quality is measured in units. In the case of call quality, the units are points on the five-point Mean Opinion Score (MOS) scale. This means that in bar charts showing call quality, the line graph shows the average MOS of all calls made between the endpoints in a call group. And the bars are further broken down into call-quality mappings to show the percentage of all calls that were rated as having Good, Acceptable, and Poor quality or were Unavailable.
You can set the mappings for call quality and for all result metrics to determine how collected results translate into VoIP readiness ratings. For more information, see Section 7.8.1, Setting Result Ranges.
On charts that break out specific impairment factors by day or by hour, a line graph of that factor’s values is superimposed over a bar graph. For example, a line graph of Lost Data Evaluation by Day gives you a quick overview of the lost data results averaged for each day of the assessment. The bars show what percentage of the lost data values fell into the Good, Acceptable, and Poor ranges.
For charts that show results broken out by hour of the day, it can be difficult to see all the values that extend to two decimal places. When you add all the values in a column, it can, therefore, appear that the values total only 99%. To see the full values, including the decimal places, double-click any chart to launch Microsoft Excel. You then have access to the spreadsheet containing your data.
In Vivinet Assessor reports, bar charts are paired with data tables so that you can quickly scan the results and see the specific values. Different colors in the bar charts provide an overview of the data, while the tables provide the specifics.
Most values shown are based on averages. For example, when you look at the charts that break out Call Quality by time of day (“Call Quality Evaluation by Hour,” for example), you seeing quality averages for all simulated calls that were sent over the network during a certain hour of the day over the course of the entire assessment.
During the Utilization assessment, Vivinet Assessor sends out SNMP queries to the network devices and links you discovered during the Network Inventory to gather data on network utilization. Responses to these queries do not always make it back to the Console. For various reasons, including network congestion or link failure, the responses are lost, and Vivinet Assessor receives no data from a device or link during a polling period. This fact is recorded in the reports; the device or link is said to be “Unavailable,” and the measurement that could not be obtained is said to be “n/a” (not available).
In the VoIP Readiness Assessment reports, statistics on “Unavailable” measurements for devices and links are shown separately from the utilization measurements used to determine their readiness rating. Look at the Router Utilization Details chart in the Sample report for an example. For more information, see Section 12.6, Sample Reports.
No readiness rating is given at all if a device was completely “Unavailable” during the assessment. The “Unavailable” results are shown separately within the table because they are not folded into the measurements for each device and link. After all, it is entirely possible that the devices in question never actually went down during the assessment, so no values were recorded in order to avoid skewing the results. However, this method of reporting can in itself be misleading: keep in mind that the more frequently a device was “Unavailable” during polling intervals, the fewer samples were used to determine the results. Assuming, for example, that a certain switch was “Unavailable” for 90% of the polling intervals in the assessment, that switch’s “Good” readiness rating is not very impressive.
NOTE:Another reason for “Unavailable” results is that Vivinet Assessor cannot always get information about every utilization measurement from every device. Some device MIBs do not support certain utilization measurements.
You should investigate when a device or link has high unavailability.
If endpoints were found to be “Unavailable” in the initial VoIP Quality Summary, generate the Complete Report to find out what went wrong. In the sections that recap the assessment of VoIP Quality, the Complete Report offers an Availability Summary that breaks out all availability issues into specific categories. This summary supplements the error information you can view in The Log Viewer.
The explanations listed in the table below may not cover all instances in which the endpoints return the specified error to the Console. Be sure to check the Log Viewer for the assessment and click the Help for Message button to find out more. For more information, see Section 11.5, The Log Viewer.
An endpoint may be “Unavailable” due to any of the following errors, shown in the Availability Summary as percentages of all “Unavailable” endpoints The CHR# error messages you are likely to see are also indicated:
|
Error Type |
Likely Explanation |
Error Messages |
|---|---|---|
|
Endpoint Unavailable |
An endpoint was not installed, or was not started, or else the endpoint version does not support a requested function, such as QoS. |
CHR0125 CHR0204 |
|
Network Connectivity |
A network problem is preventing the Console from contacting the , or preventing the endpoints from contacting the Console. Or a network problem is preventing the endpoints from contacting each other. |
CHR0200 CHR0201 CHR0202 CHR0225 CHR0142 CHR0144 CHR0373 |
|
Clock Sync |
The endpoints in a call group were unable to synchronize their high-precision clocks. A firewall may have prevented clock-synchronization flows between the endpoints For more information, see Section 7.8.2, Working with Firewalls. |
CHR0371 |
|
Assessor Unavailable |
The Console lost contact with the endpoints The Scheduler service may have gone down, or the Console computer may have been powered off. For more information, see Section 11.3, Scheduler Errors. |
CHR0372 |
|
Test Timeout |
Calls were interrupted; Endpoint 2 was no longer receiving data sent by Endpoint 1 and notified the Console. |
any other message |