ip sla port 1967/2020

Cisco IOS IP SLAs Operation with Responders

Using an IP SLAs responder provides enhanced measurement accuracy—without the need for dedicated third-party external probe devices—and additional statistics that are not otherwise available via standard Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)-based measurements.

When a network manager configures an IP SLAs operation on the IP SLAs source, reaction conditions can also be defined, and the operation can be scheduled to be run for a period of time to gather statistics. The source uses the IP SLAs control protocol to communicate with the responder before sending test packets. To increase security of IP SLAs control messages, message digest 5 (MD5) authentication can be used to secure the control protocol exchange.

The following sequence of events occurs for each IP SLAs operation that requires a responder on the target, as illustrated in Figure 5-7:

1. At the start of the control phase, the IP SLAs source sends a control message with the configured IP SLAs operation information to IP SLAs control port UDP 1967 on the target router (the responder). The control message includes the protocol, port number, and duration of the operation. In Figure 5-7, UDP port 2020 is used for the IP SLAs test packets.

   If MD5 authentication is enabled, the MD5 checksum is sent with the control message, and the responder verifies the MD5 checksum. If the authentication fails, the responder returns an "authentication failure" message.

2. If the responder processes the control message, it sends an "OK" message to the source and listens on the port specified in the control message for a specified duration. If the responder cannot process the control message, it returns an error. If the IP SLAs source does not receive a response from the responder, it tries to retransmit the control message. It will eventually time out if it does not receive a response.

   NOTE

   The responder is capable of responding to multiple IP SLAs measurement operations that try to connect to the same port number.

3. If an "OK" message is returned, the IP SLAs operation on the source moves to the probing phase where it sends one or more test packets to the responder to compute response times. In Figure 5-7, the test messages are sent on control port 2020.
4. The responder accepts the test packets and responds. Based on the type of operation, the responder may add an "in" time stamp and an "out" time stamp in the response packet payload to account for the CPU time spent measuring unidirectional packet loss, latency, and jitter. These time stamps help the IP SLAs source make accurate assessments of one-way delay and processing time in target routers. The responder disables the user-specified port after it responds to the IP SLAs measurements packet or when the specified time expires.

http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1613547&seqNum=3