Monitoring with Cisco WAAS › How Cisco WAAS Works as a Monitoring Device › How Cisco WAAS Works

How Cisco WAAS Works

The Cisco WAAS Flow Agent on the Cisco WAE device polls the management console every 5 minutes for a list of server IP addresses to monitor. The Cisco WAAS Flow Agent sends packet digest files with matching TCP headers of optimized traffic to its assigned CA Standard Monitor or CA Multi-Port Monitor. A Distributed management console is required.

The packet digest files are received by the WAN Opt monitor feed on the CA Standard Monitor or CA Multi-Port Monitor where they are processed into response time metrics for each observed application/server/network combination.

The Cisco WAAS Flow Agent monitors application traffic based on the list of servers stored on the management console. To enable the Cisco WAAS Flow Agent to automatically monitor new server traffic, an additional monitoring device is required to monitor the server SPAN.

The Cisco WAAS Flow Agent does not send TCP headers for unoptimized traffic and does not calculate response time metrics.

Unlike the Cisco NAM Metric Agent, the Cisco WAAS Flow Agent sends:

• Packet digest files that include TCP headers rather than computed response time metrics.
• Sends TCP headers for optimized traffic that matches the Server List rather than all optimized traffic.