Cisco Cisco Prime Unified Service Monitor 9.0 Information Guide
Q&A
© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Cisco Unified Service Monitor 8.6
Q. What is Cisco
®
Unified Service Monitor (USM)?
A. Cisco Unified Service Monitor is part of the Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite. It provides a
low-cost, reliable method of monitoring and evaluating the quality of voice in Cisco Unified Communications
Solutions. It continuously monitors active calls supported by the Cisco Unified Communications system and
provides near real-time notification when the voice quality of a call, represented as end-user experience
expressed by a Mean Opinion Score (MOS), fails to meet a user-defined quality threshold. It also provides a
variety of reports that characterize the user experience as measured by the system and provide details on the
endpoints that are most affected due to voice quality alerts. In addition to call quality analysis, Cisco Unified
Service Monitor can perform call classification based on dial plan for each cluster that is managed using
Cisco Unified Service Monitor. Cisco Unified Service Monitor provides system-defined call types and also
allows users to create user-defined call types to correctly classify the calls. The filter-based, on-demand
reports for call detail records (CDRs) provide further visibility into various call details needed for analysis or
reporting.
Q. What are the components of Cisco Unified Service Monitor?
A. The Cisco Unified Service Monitor voice quality solution consists of central Cisco Unified Service Monitor
software and Cisco 1040 Sensor hardware.
The Cisco Unified Service Monitor application software operates on a Windows Server 2003 or Windows
2008 platform and receives voice quality information from Cisco 1040 Sensors, Cisco Network Analysis
Module (NAM), and Cisco Unified Communications Manager 4.2 or later systems. Users can configure MOS
thresholds on a per codec basis; alerts are sent to an upstream application such as Cisco Unified Operations
Manager when a MOS threshold is violated. Cisco Unified Service Monitor allows users to understand the
service quality experience at a system level through Cisco Voice Transmission Quality (VTQ) support and in
real time through the Cisco 1040 Sensors and NAM.
Q. What are the key benefits of Cisco Unified Service Monitor?
A. The key benefits are:
●
Supports the latest releases of Cisco Unified Communications Solution components
●
Provides real-time alerting and reporting on call quality metrics
●
Uses call metrics from Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco NAM, Cisco 1040 Sensors
●
Correlates call detail records and NAM/1040 call reports for enhanced analysis
●
Provides the ability to pinpoint the network segment causing call quality degradation
●
Provides configurable thresholds based on MOS, codec, endpoints, Communications Manager, and
sensors
●
Call classification based on dial plan per cluster
●
System- and user-defined call types
●
Rich filter-based, on-demand call type (CDR) reports