Response Time Charts
The ability to graphically compare
devices or applications based not only on "hard faults" (e.g., system crashes)
but also "soft faults" (e.g., memory leaks, response time degradation, etc.)
gives a more complete picture of the relative suitability of a component to a
given deployment scenario. Latency-sensitive applications unable to
process valid data in specific timeframes may not meet response-time goals or
service level agreements.
Mu's Response Time Charts interactively expose quality and availability
issues to accelerate remediation. Customers can actively gauge a system's
ability to maintain control and specific performance levels while processing
unexpected inputs.
Charting Response Time and
Latency with the Mu-4000
For instance, for an IMS
application, it may be tested using Diameter but the effect on the billing
system may affect call processing. So not only would the Mu-4000 use valid
Diameter traffic (and collect response-time data there), but the Mu-4000 could
also use secondary instrumentation and make SIP calls through the IMS cloud to
see if the call processing path is affected by the Diameter traffic.
The purpose of the response-time
charts is to provide context for the faults, since it's possible that the
service could be suffering from degraded response time due to the traffic the
Mu-4000 is sending, and that the accumulated effect of this traffic causes a
fault much later. The response time charts provide the context to help identify
the root cause of the fault. The fault may be the straw that broke the camel's
back, but the root cause might be traffic that was not proximal to the fault.
Also, even when there are no
faults, the statistics that can be derived from the response time data can be
very revealing. A service that offers consistent response times, regardless of
how much invalid traffic it receives, may be preferred to one that has highly
variable response time. Every provider has their own "threshold of pain:" How
high can the response time go before they would say that their service is
considered to be impaired?
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