Proven Solutions for Proactive Service Assurance

In recent years, residential broadband users, home workers and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) are putting increasing bandwidth and performance demands on broadband service delivery networks as they continue to embrace an ever-growing list of applications offering entertainment and enhanced business efficiency.

Meeting the increased demands on the network requires broadband service providers to perpetually keep up the capacity of their core, aggregation, and access networks. Failure to do so can result in service bottlenecks that ultimately lead to degraded network performance and a poor subscriber experience.

Equally challenging for broadband service providers is the ongoing transformation of their broadband service delivery network infrastructure. Changes include the convergence of IP from core to access, as well as adoption of newer broadband access technologies, such as WiMAX, FTTx, and cable that are more cost-effective and aligned to the various geographies and demographics of the subscriber base. All of this has contributed to creating an increasingly complex and costly, geographically distributed and diverse broadband network environment to manage and monitor.

Broadband service providers are also concerned with subscribers defecting to their competitors due to frustration associated with unreliable access to Internet content and services. Since the modern-day Internet is “always-on,” the consumer expects an “always available” broadband service. In addition, the user expects his applications to perform at acceptable speeds—comparable to what he encountered with earlier forms of voice and TV technology. Any deviation from these expectations will lead to a poor quality user experience. Therefore, every effort needs to be made to monitor end-user quality of experience and to anticipate any network or service events that could lead to end-user migration or churn and place broadband revenue streams in jeopardy.

With a well monitored network and effective service assurance program and tools in place, broadband service providers will be able to:

ff Monitor service and resource performance across the heterogeneous broadband network from a single, unified view, as well as from a technology and vendor perspective

ff Avoid poor customer experience due to degradation or failure of resources anywhere along the broadband service delivery network

ff Proactively investigate network-related issues and their potential impact on subscribers and address them before they lead to service dissatisfaction

ff Gain regional/market/site visibility into the large-scale, geographically dispersed access networks for improved troubleshooting, problem resolution, and service growth planning

ff Reduce high truck roll costs caused by the lack of visibility into resource performance issues that impact services

ff Reduce operational delays to ensure fast time-to-market of new broadband services

ff Gain an understanding of subscriber-driven service and network resource use for more accurate service growth planning and capital expenditure optimization across consumer groups and geographies

InfoVista offers a focused broadband market solution that helps broadband service providers address the aforementioned objectives. The Broadband Knowledge Pack offers a complete set of capabilities for comprehensive service assurance in the multi-domain, heterogeneous, triple-play services environment. It equips broadband service providers with the pertinent and timely information they need to ensure a quality subscriber experience, maintain profitability and subscriber growth, and gain operational efficiencies.

InfoVista BroadBand Knowledge PackComprehensive Service Assurance for the Multi-Domain, Heterogeneous, Triple-Play Services Environment

The Challenges of Delivering Quality, Always Available Broadband Services

Internet

VODServer

VideoContents

HostedContent

BRAS

EdgeRouter

AggregationNetwork

Access Networks Residential

Business

Residential

Residential

Business

PSTN

BackhaulNetwork

GbE GbE

DSLAM

FTTx

CMTS

WiMAXBase Station

GbE10 GbE

Core IP/MPLS Network

Broadband ServiceData Center

InfoVista’s Broadband Knowledge Pack in the Broadband Services Environment

As pictured in Figure 1, the broadband network is built from multiple interoperable domains ranging from core network, through edge, aggregation and access, to the content providers and the media head-end. Regardless of the content being provided and where on the network that content must travel, service providers must understand and assure a subscriber’s experience when that subscriber connects to and uses the service provider’s broadband service.

In this multi-technology broadband network, access devices such as DSLAMs, WiMAX base stations, and CMTSs connect subscribers to the service provider’s network, while aggregating customer data into high-capacity uplinks. These uplinks provide connection to an aggregating network that is typically regional-based and increasingly being deployed using Carrier Ethernet technology. Broadband traffic aggregation devices, such as broadband remote access servers (BRASs), access service network gateways (ASN-GWs) and cable modem termination systems (CMTSs), provide routing of traffic from access devices, termination of PPP (Point to Point Protocol) sessions and enforcement of QoS policies on a per-flow and per-subscriber basis.

The quality of the user’s experience (QoE) is influenced by the amount of service traffic across the broadband service delivery chain and the health and reachability of the resources in each domain of the network. Therefore, ensuring a high-quality broadband service experience requires that the service provider have end-to-end visibility from the core to the access networks and that it can holistically monitor the relevant performance indicators and QOE factors across the resources of the broadband network.

In the heterogeneous broadband network environment, this means visibility into the access devices, uplink and service traffic performance data for the multiple technologies in the access network, and session connectivity information in the aggregation network. It also means having visibility into end-to-end performance indicators for IP traffic performance, as well as service utilization indicators.

InfoVista’s Broadband Knowledge Pack offers this needed visibility through a consolidated performance monitoring and reporting interface. The Broadband Knowledge Pack is an add-on module that interoperates with InfoVista’s award-winning VistaInsight® for Networks, thereby leveraging InfoVista’s strengths in monitoring the IP/MPLS core network. The product features advanced service modeling that

understands the relationships between resources, the triple-play/multi-play services they support, the markets and regions served by those services, and their respective performance indicators.

A wide range of standards-based broadband KPIs are measured and presented in out-of-the-box reports and drill-down workflows. This makes it possible for service providers to quickly deploy the solution and begin monitoring the pertinent QoE factors across their diverse broadband environments—all in a centralized manner. The Broadband Knowledge Pack enables service providers to take a proactive approach to broadband service assurance by offering real-time performance and exception alerting features to enable network and service operations to avoid many service-impacting issues or quickly pinpoint and address issues when they do occur. What’s more, the capacity monitoring features provide the pertinent information for engineering and product management to anticipate and plan for subscriber-driven network and service growth needs.

In summary, the InfoVista Broadband Knowledge Pack helps service providers to reach several business goals. First, it supports them in their efforts to deliver a quality user experience, allowing them to keep a competitive edge and maintain broadband revenue growth. Second, it allows them to reduce operational costs. This includes controlling truck roll costs with proactive visibility into (and alerting of ) triple-play service degradation, as well as the ability to determine which part of the network is contributing to the issue. Mean time to repair is improved with the ability to diagnose the root cause of a service issue in a specific access node. In addition, the adoption of a single standards-based toolset adds efficiencies for performance management in a heterogeneous broadband network environment. Last, the Broadband Knowledge Pack enables service providers to reduce capital expenditures through capacity planning optimization by accurately forecasting when and where network upgrades, redeployments or expansions are required.

Figure 1. Multi-Domain, Multi-Technology Broadband Network Architecture

Table 1. Features and Benefits of the InfoVista Broadband Knowledge Pack

Features Benef itting Role Benef its

End-to-end visibility across the broadband service delivery chain

Real-time and historical monitoring and reporting of service performance indicators (reachability, latency, jitter) via active probes in access, aggregation and core networks and the broadband service data center

f9 Engineering

f9 Service Operations

f9 Enables assurance of quality user experience through visibility of complete service chain.

f9 Enables proactive monitoring to catch degradation and address it before service quality is affected.

Service reachability correlation with resource performance along the chain

f9 Engineering

f9 Network Operations

f9 Expedites troubleshooting by allowing staff to quickly pinpoint the source of a failure anywhere along the chain and resolve the issue.

Triple-play service quality management

Service traffic utilization at access nodes segregated by service interfaces:

fy S-VLAN monitoring at DSLAM nodes

fy WiMAX service class monitoring at WiMAX base stations

f9 Engineering

f9 Product Management

f9 Service Operations

f9 Enables service provider staff to assure a quality user experience, facilitating subscriber retention.

f9 Information on subscriber service usage trending and forecasting allows for better planning of product offerings and pricing strategies, giving the service provider a competitive edge.

Service traffic utilization correlation with reachability

f9 Engineering

f9 Network Operations

f9 Proactive monitoring of service degradation at access node enables reduced truck roll cost and improved MTTR.

Unified visibility and support of heterogeneous access technologies

Access node device, interface, and service monitoring for DSLAMs, WiMAX base stations, and CMTSs f9 Network Operations

f9 OSS Architect

f9 Allows real time and historical visibility between the core network and the access devices, enabling the service provider to optimize resource utilization by identifying under- and over-used links.

Visibility into performance indicators via a “single pane of glass” view

f9 Increased operational efficiencies and optimized capital expenditure with single tool set for multi-technology environments.

Geographic-based viewing of broadband services and network performance

Geographical aggregation of service and resource performance indicators into groupings: regions, markets and sites f9 Network Operations

f9 Product Management

f9 Network and service growth planning improvements based on market and regional demand forecasting and trending.

Resource and service performance views presented in relation to the geographical groupings

f9 Enables operations team to pinpoint the exact location of the problematic network resource when analyzing service performance degradation.

Proactive service growth planning and CAPEX optimization capabilities

Device and uplink usage forecasting for the DSLAM, BRAS, CMTS and WiMAX base station

Advanced capacity planning indicators for the BRAS

f9 Engineering f9 Accurately forecast where and when network upgrades, redeployments or expansions are required.

f9 Allows service providers to ensure resources are not over-subscribed, hence not impairing the services on the router.

Service and device usage trending and forecasting information based on geographic groupings

f9 Product Management

f9 Sales

f9 Improves understanding of changing subscriber usage patterns for regional- and market-based expansion planning.

f9 Presents account representative with up-sell opportunities, through ability to ascertain when customer subscription levels are inadequate.

Standards-based monitoring

Broadband Forum TR-144, IEEE 802.16f and DOCSIS 1.0 and DOCSIS 2.0 support

f9 OSS Architect f9 Ensures that appropriate performance indicators for each technology are monitored.

f9 Operational and customization costs are reduced via an out-of-the-box, standards-based solution.

Interoperability with VistaInsight for Networks

Broadband Knowledge Pack 2.0 pages integrated in VistaInsight for Networks 4.0 pages

f9 Network Operations f9 Creates operational efficiencies by enabling users to see performance and capacity planning reports for broadband services and resources in the same interface.

Solution Requirements

Broadband Knowledge Pack

Application pre-requisites: VistaInsight for Networks 4.0, Vista Foundation Kit 4.1 SP1

Network compatibility: The Broadband Knowledge Pack has been tested against the following network/vendor release levels:

Huawei DSLAM

ff MA5600/MA5603/MA5605

ff MA5600T/MA5606T

ff MA5680T

ff UA5000

Juniper ERX

ff E320/E120

ff ERX-1410/ERX-1440

ff ERX-710/ERX-705 and ERX-310

Cisco CMTS

ff uBR

Arris CMTS

ff C4

WiMAX Base Stations

ff Redline RedMAX AN100U Base Station

ff Harris Stratex StarMAX 6000 Series 16d Base Station

VistaLink for Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC 1 5.x 2 , 6.1, 7.0, 7.1

Alcatel-Lucent DSLAM

ff 7300 ASAM, 7301 ASAM

ff 7302 ISAM, 7330 ISAM FTTN, 7342 ISAM FTTU

1 Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC required only if monitoring Alcatel-Lucent ASAM or ISAM2 Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC 5.x does not provide ALU DSLAM device statistics

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For more information, please visit www.infovista.comFor sales inquiries please email: marketing@infovista.com

Copyright 2010 InfoVista S.A. All rights reserved.

Strategic Vendor PartnershipsInfoVista has close partnerships with the major broadband access device vendors including Huawei, Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent to support continued integration by staying synchronized with new versions. While Huawei DSLAM and Juniper BRAS are monitored directly from the devices, the Broadband Knowledge Pack provides off-the-shelf integration with Alcatel-Lucent’s 5529 SDC (Statistics and Data Collector) to monitor Alcatel-Lucent DSLAMs through InfoVista’s VistaLink® for Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC.

InfoVista VistaLink for Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC

The Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC is a flexible and scalable statistics collector for Alcatel-Lucent access equipment. It provides statistics and data collection for Alcatel-Lucent 7300 ASAM, 7301 ASAM, 7302 ISAM, 7330 ISAM FTTN, 7342 ISAM FTTU. Data is collected, stored, organized and transferred under the control of the InfoVista VistaLink.

The integration enables the collection of statistics from the broadband access nodes via the northbound Web services interface into the Alcatel-Lucent 5529 SDC Server. By interfacing with the Alcatel 5529 SDC statistics collection repository, VistaInsight for Networks retrieves DSLAM interface topology data to populate the InfoVista service model with DSLAM nodes and interfaces; while maintaining the interface lifecycle between 5529 SDC and VistaInsight for Networks. VistaInsight for Networks is then able to store performance monitoring and accounting data collected from the 5529 SDC in an organized and controlled manner. The solution delivers comprehensive performance reports and KPIs hierarchically, which service providers can use to proactively and preemptively measure the service performance of DSLAM nodes and interfaces. The integration is unique in that there is no polling done by VistaInsight for Networks. Instead, the northbound XML-based interface is used for enabling collection by 5529 SDC, and FTP is used for collection of performance statistics from 5529 SDC.