Overview

Network quality analyzer (NQA) allows you to measure network performance, verify the service levels for IP services and applications, and troubleshoot network problems. It provides the following types of operations:

• ICMP echo.

• ICMP jitter.

• DHCP.

• DLSw.

• DNS.

• FTP.

• HTTP.

• Path jitter.

• SNMP.

• TCP.

• UDP echo.

• UDP jitter.

• UDP tracert.

• Voice.

As shown in Figure 5, the NQA source device (NQA client) sends data to the NQA destination device by simulating IP services and applications to measure network performance. The obtained performance metrics include the one-way latency, jitter, packet loss, voice quality, application performance, and server response time.

All types of NQA operations require the NQA client, but only the TCP, UDP echo, UDP jitter, and voice operations require the NQA server. The NQA operations for services that are already provided by the destination device such as FTP do not need the NQA server.

You can configure the NQA server to listen and respond to specific IP addresses and ports to meet various test needs.