How Agility Accelerates Network Testing Lifecycle
A recent EY study shows that 45% of households believe that they overpay for their network services and 60% are concerned about their provider increasing their monthly premiums. Plus, some regulators ar-e demanding that telcos offer “social tariffs” to individuals claiming Universal Credit, Pension Credit, or other benefits.
Source: EY
Pressures have never been greater for telco companies to cut costs and deliver superior value to their customers.
But it’s not that simple.
New technological infrastructure is expensive and with it comes a host of privacy and security obstacles, integration risks, as well as the testing and analysis challenges due to increased data complexity.
If telcos want to stay at the forefront of this digital transformation and deliver on the demands of their customers, then they need to implement tools that will allow them to cut costs and scale their testing, and launch new services faster.
Enter AGILITY. AGILITY brings pre-trained artifiicial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models that gives telcos the power to roll out 5G networks faster than ever before, automate PCAP analysis, conduct intelligent root cause analyses, visualize end-to-end call flows, and much more.
Read on to learn why many current testing frameworks are insufficient for modern network needs, how AGILITY works, as well as the benefits of implementing the most powerful cloud-native, AI-powered solution in-market.
The Problem: Lack of End-to-End Interactive Call Flow Visualization
Here’s the thing: there are a number of tools in-market that aid with call flow visualization. Tools like Wireshark, nGeniusONE, and the Iris Session Analyzer can provide color-coded failure analysis from network tests at the packet level.
However, these tools predominantly focus on packet-level data, like packet headers, payloads, and protocols. This data enables deep-dive analysis into protocol behavior at the packet level but makes it difficult for engineers and operators to gather a holistic view of network behavior.
In order to effectively scale testing and illustrate the flow of network traffic and interactions between network elements, engineers and operators need something more powerful. They need a solution that can present the sequence of messages, interactions, and the overall flow of network traffic in a visual format, allowing them to comprehend the network's behavior at a glance and determine root cause sooner.
The Problem: Inefficient Root Cause Analysis
Traditional root cause analysis (RCA) methods in the telecommunications industry are inefficient and lack a holistic view of network behavior. Existing tools like Wireshark, nGeniusONE, and the Iris Session Analyzer primarily focus on packet-level data, limiting engineers' ability to gather a comprehensive understanding of network performance.
Manual RCA processes are also time-consuming and labor-intensive, leading to prolonged network outages and frustrated customers. There is a pressing need for a more efficient and scalable solution that combines AI-powered automation with advanced call flow visualization.
The Solution: AI-Powered Call Flow Visualization, Troubleshooting, Analysis, and RCA
By leveraging tools like AGILITY, engineers can unlock deeper insights into overall network behavior and accelerate network troubleshooting and analysis. This leads to more tests performed, faster issue resolution, and improved operational efficiency.
Below are the eight key features of AGILITY.
Intelligent Root Error & Root Cause Identification
AGILITY leverages ML models that have been trained on large datasets of network traffic to learn patterns and behaviors associated with different types of errors. These models are capable of identifying common root errors based on the observed network behavior.
Once a root error is identified, AGILITY employs its ML algorithms to conduct root cause analysis. It analyzes the network traffic, protocols, and interactions to trace the error back to its underlying cause. This analysis can uncover issues such as misconfigurations, network congestion, faulty equipment, or security threats that are responsible for the observed root error.
In-depth Protocol Level Analysis
AGILITY extracts and examines detailed information specific to each protocol found in the network traffic, such as TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), UDP (User Datagram Protocol), SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), and more. It dissects the protocols' headers, payload data, and other relevant information to gain a comprehensive understanding of the network behavior.
Automated Packet Analysis
AGILITY approaches packet analysis by:
- Processing packet capture (PCAP) files to extract relevant information and perform analysis on the captured packets.
- Parsing the packet data and identifying various network protocols present in the traffic so AGILITY can understand the structure and behavior of the network traffic.
- Employ ML algorithms to analyze patterns, anomalies, and potential issues within the captured traffic to extract insights on the overall network.
- AGILITY then compares the observed traffic patterns with the learned patterns in order to identify any deviations or anomalies in the network traffic.
- Based on the analysis results, AGILITY provides troubleshooting recommendations to address the identified issues.
Multi-Call Flow Root Cause Analysis
AGILITY goes beyond analyzing individual call flows by correlating information across multiple sessions, and contextual data sources, such as Jaeger or network element logs, to identify common factors and dependencies. AGILITY then identifies the root causes of the errors through ML-driven insights and visualizes the analysis results for network engineers. This approach enables the detection of network issues impacting multiple sessions simultaneously, provides actionable insights, and streamlines troubleshooting efforts.
End-to-End Call Flow Correlation
AGILITY achieves end-to-end call flow correlation by extracting call flows from network traffic data, correlating messages based on various factors, generating dynamic sequence diagrams, and applying machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection.
It then visualizes the correlated call flows, anomalies, and root causes, empowering network engineers to understand the complete communication path, diagnose problems, and make informed decisions for optimization.
Insightful Call Flow Summary & Deviation KPIs
B-Yond’s proprietary technology is also capable of creating insightful call flow summaries and deviation key performance indicators (KPIs). AGILITY analyzes call flows, defines relevant metrics, compares real-time data with historical averages, identifies deviations, assesse issue severity, and presenting the results through visualizations and reports.
Interactive Call Flow Visualization & Call Flow History
With AGILITY, network engineers are able to navigate through dynamic visualizations to explore the sequence of messages, interactions between network elements, and protocol-specific details of call flows. Additionally, AGILITY maintains a repository of past network issue resolutions, allowing engineers to leverage prior knowledge and experiences for faster troubleshooting.
Network Failure Knowledge Bases
AGILITY collects and organizes information on call flows, protocol-specific details, errors, and performance metrics to build a structured repository of insights. AGILITY continuously learns from new data to refine the knowledge base and provides intelligent recommendations for issue resolution based on historical data.
This empowers network engineers with a valuable resource for troubleshooting and resolving network problems efficiently, leading to improved network performance and reliability.
+ Unmatched Flexibility and Security with AGILITY
Okay, so this all sounds good… but what about deployment options and data security?
AGILITY can be deployed on your internal cluster or as a SaaS solution. Plus, you can rest assured knowing that AGILITY adheres to the Cloud Security Alliance's (CSA) highest standards, so you can focus on your business with peace of mind.
Flexible Deployment Options
With AGILITY, you can choose the deployment option that best suits you.
1. Deploy Agility on your internal cluster with a simple, fully automated operator
Are you looking for complete control and customization over your network testing environment? This deployment option enables you to leverage your existing infrastructure and take advantage of the scalability and security measures already in place. With Agility seamlessly integrated into your internal cluster, you can streamline your network testing and analysis workflows without the need for extensive changes to your network architecture.
2. Deploy Agility on the B-Yond Cloud as a secure SaaS solution
Alternatively, if you prefer a hassle-free, cloud-based solution, AGILITY can be deployed on the B-Yond Cloud as a secure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering. B-Yond Cloud provides a robust and scalable infrastructure that ensures high availability, performance, and data security. As a SaaS solution, AGILITY eliminates the burden of managing hardware and infrastructure, allowing you to focus on network testing and analysis.
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Whether you choose the B-Yond Cloud or would prefer to deploy on your preferred public cloud or on-premise Kubernetes cluster, AGILITY provides unparalleled flexibility to adapt to your organization's unique requirements.
Advanced Security Measures
Experience top-tier data protection and compliance in a cloud-native SaaS solution. With AGILITY, you get:
- End-to-end security and data privacy controls, including data-at-rest and data-in-motion protection.
- Identity and access management so you can maintain full control over security keys, preventing unauthorized access to your data, even by B-Yond
- A Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) to document all implemented security controls, providing transparency and accountability
- An optional 3rd-party audit and compliance certification, demonstrating our commitment to maintaining the highest security standards
3 Key Benefits of AGILITY
The primary benefits of AI-powered network troubleshooting and analysis can be boiled down into three primary buckets.
1. Increased Scalability
You might have the smartest and most capable engineers in the world, but no matter how strong your team is, it will never be enough to meet the demands and complexity of new 4G and 5G networks—unless you can increase the volume of tests your team can administer in a day.
That’s where AI and ML come in. AGILITY gives network engineers the power to increase their daily testing capacity by 10x.
This is made possible through:
- Fast prediction processing times. Reduce PCAP analysis time from hours to under 5 minutes for most goals and depth.
- Streamlined results. Forget sifting through large volumes of data. With AGILITY, you can process multiple GBs of packets with intuitive sequence diagrams and automatic network element auto-detection.
- And faster rollouts. Reduce time to market for new services by 2x.
2. Decreased OPEX
Telcos are under intense market pressure to improve service offerings while also keeping costs down. In other words, introduce newer, more complex technologies (like 5G) without increasing the cost to test, operate, and manage those services and networks.
In fact, a recent EY study found that the high cost of technology infrastructure is the top barrier that telcos are facing with respect to digital transformation, with 39% of companies citing this challenge. Human factors are inhibiting transformation due to increased data complexity.
Source: EY
Without new revenue growth, telco executives are stuck looking for ways to reduce operating expenses (OPEX) and increase margins for their businesses.
AGILITY gives executives the power to do more with the resources they already have. As mentioned above, the same field team can conduct 10x the testing volume and that increase in test capacity correlates with a 75% decrease in root cause analysis (RCA) costs. Cheaper testing and an increase in testing volume correlate with more efficient network operations, faster mobilization of new services, and more—without hurting the bottom line.
3. Fewer Network Outages
Network outages can be caused by equipment failures, power outages, cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and much more. However, one of the fastest-growing causes of network outages is failures stemming from planned maintenance or network upgrades.
Case: Rogers Nationwide Outage
On Friday, July 8, 2022, Rogers had a nationwide network outage that lasted for more than 12 hours, affecting numerous sectors and millions of Canadians.
This outage was the result of a system failure following a maintenance update in their core network which caused some of their routers to malfunction. This failure was entirely preventable had the Rogers team been able to more thoroughly test their network. However, additional testing time would have meant increased costs and delayed time to market for new services.
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By adopting an AI and ML-powered network testing tool like AGILITY, telcos can meet consumer demand and market pressures head-on by increasing their testing capacity, reducing the cost to test and launch new services and minimizing the risk of network outages.
Conclusion
Telcos are up against the wall.
Digital transformation and the launch of new technologies are all but mandatory, yet consumers expect these new services to not impact their monthly payments.
Improving operational efficiencies and cutting OPEX are the only options on the table, and AGILITY is a surefire way to do both. AGILITY is the leading AI and ML-powered solution for eliminating the monotonous parts of manual testing in order to boost network analysis and troubleshooting productivity.
Plus, AGILITY is already trusted for intelligent network management by some of the leading telcos in North America, like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
If you’re ready to transform your network analysis and troubleshooting workflows by automating PCAP analysis, unlocking interactive call flow visualization, and so much more—then contact sales today to learn more about AGILITY.
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