Overview

General information

AA reporting attributes are metadata parameters that specify how application performance data is reported to systems such as the Analytics application; the parameters are not deployed to NEs.

The parameters are configurable on the following object properties forms:

See To enable application performance reporting on a service , To configure application performance reporting on a SAP or SDP binding , To configure application performance reporting for a transit subscriber , and To disable application performance reporting on a service for configuration information.

Enabling reporting

You can use a Cflowd or Analytics application client to configure application performance reporting, which enables AA performance and flow-based volume reporting to entities such as the Analytics application.

For increased reporting granularity, and to reduce the amount of reported information, you can use default DCP groups to segregate the Internet or intranet traffic of an entire network, an IP address range, or a single IP address.

You can create custom DCP groups for service objects to report only the required business application data for a service that has an application profile. See Default and custom DCP groups.

A reporting system can use the collected data to perform Apdex analysis. Apdex measures the quality of end-user experience with respect to Internet applications.

See AA reporting for more information about application performance reporting.

Apdex reporting

Application performance index, or Apdex reporting, is a standard method of estimating the end-user satisfaction associated with online application delivery; for example, you can configure Apdex to monitor a VoIP or video stream, which requires very low delay.

Apdex measures quality indicators that include the following:

Visit the Apdex Alliance website for detailed Apdex information.

The NFM-P supports Apdex threshold configuration based on the following:

The NFM-P uses tiers to classify the application types. An Apdex tier signifies the traffic importance and specifies which set of application performance thresholds are in effect.

Each tier has default end-user frustration and tolerance thresholds for quantifying the application performance. You can modify the threshold values for each tier to attain the desired quality of end-user experience.

For residential Apdex, the thresholds are configurable for an AA group or partition, application group, and application. A child object, for example, an application, can inherit the threshold values from the parent application group or AA partition. A child object can also override the parent thresholds.

You can also configure tier-based Apdex reporting for the following service objects:

Note: You must associate an application profile with an object in order to configure AA reporting on the object.

IP detail reporting

You can configure service-level IP detail reporting, which collects information about the most active end users, by volume, of applications and applications groups.

The following service types support IP detail configuration:

Usage-based billing

The NFM-P supports application-specific reporting to systems such as the Analytics application based on configurable charging groups. You create charging groups as child objects of an AA group policy and can assign them to the following:

You can assign one charging group to multiple applications or application groups, and can associate an application or application group with only one charging group.

You can configure charging groups with specific usage quotas and notification thresholds, and assign the thresholds to application profiles.

DCP groups

An NFM-P operator can configure business or residential DCP groups that specify how to summarize the collected reporting data for upstream reporting systems, which use the group specifications as an aggregation framework for analysis.

A DCP group organizes subscriber traffic based on the IP address range in a subnet rule that represents a subscriber address range or the server address range of a content provider. A DCP group can contain up to 100 subnet rules.

A residential DCP group is configured in an AA group policy. A business DCP group is configured as part of a service, for example, on the Application Assurance tab of an Epipe. Either can contain up to 65 535 DCP groups.

You can use DCP groups to help identify traffic patterns such as the following:

You can use the NFM-P policy sync group function to synchronize the DCP groups in one AA group policy with other AA group policies. See Policy sync groups in AA components for more information.

Default and custom DCP groups

When you enable application performance reporting in an AA group policy or service, the NFM-P creates default IPv4 and IPv6 Intranet and Internet DCP groups that separately aggregate all subscriber and content-server traffic. You can add DCP subnet rules to a default DCP group, or create multiple custom DCP groups per service.

You can associate one of the following subscriber objects with a custom DCP group in a service:

A SAP or spoke SDP binding requires an application profile before you can associate it with a custom DCP group; a business transit subscriber is associated with an AA group that is configured for use in the VPN context.

If application performance reporting is disabled in a global AA group policy, the NFM-P retains the associated default and custom DCP groups for future use.