About CNA agents

CNA agents are network devices running software that performs synthetic network tests in response to requests from a CNA server’s Chatter module. CNA agents send test packets to perform these tests and then forward the test results to a Chatter module for analysis and reporting. Each CNA agent can run tests with another CNA agent or with a specified IP address.

Two types of devices can serve as CNA agents:

• Avaya products and Avaya-partner products such as Security Gateways (SG), Media Gateways, Extreme switches, and IP phones that have embedded CNA agent software.
• CNA Agent Devices, which are small, stand-alone devices that run CNA agent software. You can buy these devices from Avaya and install them in your network to provide agent-based measurement data.

The CNA server itself has embedded CNA agent software. Figure 1 shows a basic CNA implementation with one CNA server and multiple CNA agents.

Figure 1:  CNA agents in CNA system