Overview

Introduction

Nectar End Point Client® Agents are high performance software-based active test agents designed for pre-deployment testing, SLA monitoring, and advanced troubleshooting of multimedia service quality and IP network performance.

Nectar End Point Client Agents can generate test VoIP and videoconferencing calls using a wide range of codecs and payloads, including voice/video/audio media and DTMF sequences for performance testing of IVR systems and conference bridges. In addition, Agents can perform a variety of network diagnostic tests including IP network/path analysis and synthetic transactions with SIP entities and DHCP, DNS/DoT, HTTP/HTTPS, POP/POPS, and SMTP/SMTPS servers. Many test types support multiple session protocols including UDP, TCP, TLS, SIP and SIPS. STARTTLS mode is supported for POP/SMTP tests.

Nectar End Point Client Agents are small software applications that can run as background tasks on Android® mobile devices and a wide range of Linux®- and Microsoft® Windows®-based devices such as PCs, servers, routers, switches, and customer premises equipment in key locations throughout a service network. As they exchange traffic, agents at both ends of each test connection analyze the quality of the voice or video/audio stream using integrated VQmon® performance analysis technology and provide real-time feedback including Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) and detailed performance and diagnostic metrics.

Nectar's EPC-Controller® active/passive performance management application provides the centralized management interface for Nectar End Point Client Agents. Agents are authenticated and controlled by the Nectar EPC-Controller Controller application, while direct user access to test management and test results is provided via the web browser interface of the Nectar EPC-Controller Reporter.

Management Domains

Nectar EPC-Controller and Nectar End Point Client use a shared management domain paradigm to control Agent/Controller connections and the allocation of active test resources. The use of management domains provides two key benefits:

· Agent-Controller Security – the Agent and Controller must be in the same management domain in order to establish a management connection. This greatly reduces the risk of agents being hijacked by the wrong Controller (either accidentally or deliberately) or rogue agents connecting to a Controller.

· Controlled Sharing of Test Resources – in some applications, it may be desirable to share an agent between more than one Controller. For example, a Nectar End Point Client Agent located on a customer site could be used both by the customer and by the service provider for testing. An Agent can belong to more than one management domain, which provides a controlled means by which this sharing can occur.

Access to the shared management domain is controlled by a common domain name and passphrase, similar to a Wi-Fi network name and SSID. This domain name/passphrase combination is used during agent authentication and establishment of encrypted communications.

In multiple-Controller environments, agents can be configured with more than one set of management domain credentials in order to be available to more than one Controller. In this scenario, one of the management domains is assigned administrative rights to the Agent. The Admin Controller is responsible for checking license key status on the Agent, and has the ability to cancel tests in progress that were executed.

Pool License Keys

Nectar implements a pool licensing model for agents in which a single license key can be used to dynamically assign licenses to multiple agents (the number of agents being determined by the license terms). Every pool license key is locked to a specific Nectar EPC-Controller system, and can only be used to license agents connecting to that system.

The allocation of pool licenses to Nectar End Point Client Agents is managed in the Nectar EPC-Controller Reporter by association with resource groups. Each resource group (including the system default root resource group and all user-defined groups in the resource group "tree") can be assigned its own pool key. Agents, in turn, must be associated with one or more resource groups. When an unlicensed agent connects to the Nectar EPC-Controller Controller, if the agent is associated with a resource group that has a pool license key (or one of its child groups), Nectar EPC-Controller will attempt to license the agent using that pool key.[1] If the agent is associated with multiple resource groups and multiple pool keys are available, Nectar EPC-Controller will use the pool key of the lowest associated node in the resource group tree that has licenses available. (For details on resource group hierarchy and how it affects the assignment of pool licenses to Nectar End Point Client Agents, refer to the Nectar EPC-Controller Reporter Administration Guide.)

Automatic Association Using Organization ID and Group ID

Agents can be automatically associated with a resource group using Organization ID and Organization Group ID. If these (optional) parameters are defined in a resource group configuration, any agent configured with the same Organization ID and Group ID will be automatically associated with that resource group when the agent connects to the Controller. If the agent is unlicensed and the resource group has a pool key with unassigned licenses available, Nectar EPC-Controller will attempt to license the agent from that pool key.

Each resource group Organization ID/Group ID pair must be unique to that resource group. Although Organization ID/Group ID can only be used to associate an agent with one specific resource group, users can optionally define additional resource group associations as described in Manual Association.

The Installing and Configuring the Agent chapter of this document provides details on assigning Organization ID and Group ID to a Nectar End Point Client Agent.

For details on configuring Organization ID and Organization Group ID for resource groups in the Reporter, refer to the Nectar EPC-Controller Reporter Administration Guide or Nectar EPC-Controller Reporter User Guide.

Note:

EPC-Controller's web services APIs can be used to programmatically assign Organization ID and Group ID to resource groups without using the Reporter web user interface. For details, refer to the Nectar EPC-Controller Aggregation Group Management API Specification provided with the Nectar Nectar EPC-Controller Web Services API Software Development Kit.