Noction is pleased to announce that a new version of the Intelligent Routing Platform 3.8 is now available. IRP 3.8 brings to the table a new Circuit Issues Detection feature, which allows IRP to automatically disconnect a BGP session with a provider suffering from excessive levels of packet loss, after taking into account configurable preferences and rules set by network administrators.

Additionally, the new version comes with a whole range of new and improved data analysis and reporting options including: “Daily Provider Performance”, “Probes today”, “Monitors status”, “Country Statistics” reports and many others, offering an even more granular view of a network performance.

Once the feature is enabled for a specific provider, IRP uses recent probing data to detect when it begins to suffer from excessive levels of packet loss in comparison with other peers. To determine excessive loss, IRP compares a provider's average loss over a configurable time period, the number of probes and average loss difference as compared to other providers.

When a circuit issue is detected, IRP raises alerts that network engineers or an external network management systems can act upon. With the feature enabled, IRP ensures the following:

Provider is marked and excluded from being considered a candidate for performance improvements;

Reprobing is performed for destination prefixes routed through the affected provider;

Outbound improvements through the affected provider are withdrawn;

FlowSpec rules to induce drop of BGP session towards affected provider are added. In the case of clients using our inbound functionality, prepends can also be used;

Affected provider is further monitored to detect if the issue was temporary and restore it once the loss averages return to normal;

Circuit Issues Detection parameters are listed and can be adjusted under the Core configuration section of the Front End.

IRP 3.8 is further enhanced with comprehensive reporting features, which make it easier for system administrators to obtain platform and network performance data on an ongoing basis. Nine completely new reports and graphs, as well as three updated ones, are now available. More details on what some reports detail are provided below:

The “Probes Today” report shows probing details, including probes that did not warrant an improvement or failed completely. The report shows probed prefixes and actual selected probing IPs in those prefixes with details on probe state and actual measurements across all providers.

Icons and coloring are used in the report to highlight data such as prefix improvement existence, current provider during probing or whether there's 100% loss. Filtering and sorting can be used to group data into specific categories.

This report highlights the current status of IRP monitors per provider. For Internet Exchanges the report highlights all the peers with detailed tooltips.

The “Historical monitors report” supplements Monitors status by highlighting the time, monitor details and the new state facilitating the tracing of various issues on the network and in the IRP configuration.

Each day IRP makes a multitude of probes to determine performance characteristics of alternatives routes. The daily provider performance report presents an aggregated view of these measurements for providers. The data on the report highlights Packet loss and Average latency per provider placing the provider with the best packet loss results at the top. This report allows you to break down provider performance by local, regional, continental and transcontinental, offering clients a unique insight into provider performance.

The report lines up traffic volume and number of improvements by country. It shows to what regions most of a network's traffic is addressed as well as the relative number of suboptimal routes towards such regions, which IRP identified and addressed by injecting improvements.

A map view for the report is also available, highlighting countries with the most/least number of improvements.

To get more information on the full set of graphs and reports available with IRP 3.8, please contact noction account representatives at sales@noction.com or review the documentation.

Current customers will be notified of upgrades during the coming weeks. However, if you would prefer to pre-arrange a date and time of the upgrade, you can always reach our support team via support@noction.com.