Service assurance provides 360-degree network visibility to optimize customer experience while reducing OPEX through NFV
As networks evolve to deliver increasingly complex services and to meet the challenges of exploding data and eroding revenues, communications service providers (CSPs) are racing to implement virtualization strategies. The goal is to leverage automation to enable more network flexibility and agility, while reducing costs and driving efficiencies.
The move to software-defined networks will ultimately facilitate fast innovation and rapid time-to-market for new services, enabling CSPs to better compete against hyperscale and over-the-top players. But it’s not as simple as flipping a light switch. As physical components give way to virtualized network functions (VNFs), the resulting hybrid networks create new challenges to network management and monitoring.
For example, service chaining, which coordinates traffic across multiple VNFs to create an end-to-end service, is a major advantage enabled by network functions virtualization (NFV). However, ensuring the performance of that service across a hybrid network requires a combination of physical and virtual probes, which makes it difficult for network operators to have complete visibility into a single session as it traverses the network.
NETSCOUT works with clients around the world to solve this very problem. The transition to NFV, although rife with potential for inefficiencies and waste, can be a smooth process with the right partner and the right tools.
In an interview with RCR Wireless News, Dr. Vikram Saksena,NETSCOUT’s chief solutions architect for virtualization, discussed NETSCOUT’s heritage in providing enterprise customers and network operators with service assurance solutions needed to enable flexible, scalable and always-on networks, while optimizing user experience and taking advantage of the efficiencies and cost savings promised by the move to virtual.
An important area of focus for NETSCOUT is the delivery of monitoring and assurance solutions for cloud-based network infrastructures that support virtualization, which Saksena said is now rapidly moving from the enterprise to the service provider market.
“Service providers are going a step beyond what enterprises have done because they want to be able to drive more automation and also reduce more of their OPEX,” he said. “They want to be more agile and dynamic because they have a customer base that wants to be more agile and dynamic.”
In addition to hardware-based probes, NETSCOUT adapted its technology to place monitoring agents inside VNFs, which can be run anywhere from a hypervisor to a CPE device for “on-the-fly” service delivery, Saksena said.
“Having uninterrupted visibility into this dynamic environment has been a challenge. We have to be very careful to avoid overloading the underlying infrastructure, but still gain visibility while these things are moving around. What we have done is expanded our solution suite to give network operators the visibility needed to minimize disruptions caused by the dynamics of virtual environments.”
Built on NETSCOUT’s Adaptive Service Intelligence (ASI) technology, the nGeniusONE service assurance platform quickly identifies network, application and service problems using a highly scalable metadata model. nGeniusONE can be deployed on bare metal or virtually to monitor important services including VoLTE, Wi-Fi calling, IP and HTTP video, messaging, OTT services, carrier-grade business services and high speed internet.
“Virtualization has thrown a lot of new challenges at us and we have adapted our technology,” Saksena said. “We have expanded our solution suite to make sure that CSPs can be agile and dynamic and not lose the continuous, 360-degree visibility and performance monitoring required for services across both physical and virtualized infrastructures.”
To learn more about how NETSCOUT is supporting CSP evolution to virtualization and the cloud or visit serviceprovider.netscout.com/nfv or follow @NETSCOUT on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
