Internet Protocol Service Level Agreement (IP SLA) is an active method of monitoring and reliably reporting on network performance. By “active,” I refer to the fact that IP SLA will generate and actively monitor traffic continuously across the network. An IP SLA Router is capable of generating traffic and reporting on it in real time

IP SLA can be configured in two parts. There is the IP SLA router, which generates the traffic, and the IP SLA Responder (which can be any device, not just a router). The IP SLA Responder is not required for IP SLA to function, but it does allow for more detailed information gathering and reporting.

After an IP SLAs operation has been configured, you must schedule the operation to begin capturing statistics and collecting error information. When scheduling an operation, it can start immediately or start at a certain month, day, and hour. There is a pending option to set the operation to start at a later time. The pending option is also an internal state of the operation visible through SNMP. The pending state is also used when an operation is a reaction (threshold) operation waiting to be triggered. You can schedule a single ip slas operation or a group of operations at one time.