Network function virtualization is set to disrupt several parts of the wireless ecosystem, and Accedian Networks is determined to be ahead of the curve. The network monitoring and assurance specialist said it has launched the industry’s first performance assurance controller using NFV to replace test equipment.
“We’re basically cannibalizing our own market,” said Scott Sumner, VP of solutions development and marketing at Accedian Networks. “We’re creating a price disruption that redefines the cost and capabilities that service providers should expect from monitoring solutions.” He said that Accedian’s SkyLIGHT VCX controller distributes test generation to Ethernet modules that cost roughly 10% of what a real network interface device would cost.
Accedian has virtualized the CPU functions of its existing hardware platforms, and can now host virtual network functions including performance monitoring, turn-up testing, bandwidth monitoring and synchronization testing. The new controller has its own integrated field-programmable gate arrays.
The SkyLIGHT VCX is in trials on several continents, and is in some production deployments as well. Sumner said that so far the main customers are Tier 1 carriers, and that the largest of those are in South Korea and Japan.
The company envisions its controllers distributed throughout the mobile network, eliminating much of the work currently performed by field technicians. The controller works in tandem with Accedian’s SFP (optical transponder), which can be plugged into base stations or small cells to program performance monitoring to start up automatically and run continuously.
For mobile operators, the efficacy of a new solution like this depends on employees’ readiness to adopt it. Network performance monitoring is not an area in which most operators want to experiment too much.
Accedian has tried to anticipate these concerns by delaying the public launch of its product until the virtual solution could emulate the physical one. Sumner said that the new solution’s APIs now work the way they do in the physical solution, and that users see the same alarms, metrics and commands. “Uptake has been extremely fast because the operational processes don’t change,” said Sumner.
