VisionWorks

Preventing outages before they escalate is critical for modern network reliability. A North American Tier 1 CSP transformed its network operations by implementing Spirent VisionWorks, achieving real-time visibility and actionable insights to proactively identify and resolve potential issues. By detecting problems up to 8 hours before outages occurred, the CSP avoided costly service disruptions and ensured superior subscriber satisfaction. __The Challenge__ Operating in a siloed network environment, the CSP struggled with fragmented data and reactive troubleshooting methods. With limited visibility across network segments, interconnected issues often went unnoticed until they escalated into widespread outages. Resource constraints further stretched teams tasked with managing both 4G and 5G networks. The CSP needed a solution to provide holistic visibility and enable proactive issue resolution.

Everything about 5G networks is bigger. For 4G, a large national provider might have a network topology with ten physical data centers. Mobile core functions deployed at these locations represent the edge of the mobile network – the point at which core networks interface with radio networks via IP aggregation and backhaul networks. While expensive, for 4G, a service provider could deploy service assurance probes at each of these locations to effectively monitor all user traffic and signaling.

Containing issues in today’s networks is a never-ending effort—and getting more intense as networks evolve to 5G, SD-WAN, and NFV. As networks are virtualized to support these next-gen services, manual troubleshooting simply can’t keep up. Service providers need new methods for assuring the network. This white paper explores two paths available for assuring the network: traditional passive assurance, relying on metrics collected passively as subscribers use the network. And active assurance, which utilizes highly realistic synthetic user traffic injected into the network at various points to assess performance and quality.

We’ve entered the era of 5G, with blazingly fast speeds, vast coverage density, large area traffic capacity, and super low latency. 5G is more than a step up from 4G; it’s a radical leap that dramatically improves mobile broadband services and empowers the Internet of Things (IoT) by enabling connectivity to billions of global devices. Most providers are taking an evolutionary approach to 5G, starting with 4G evolved pack core (EPC) control / user plane separation (CUPS), then migrating to 5G non-standalone (NSA), and finally deploying full native 5G or adopting Open RAN (O-RAN). Assuring a successful journey from 4G to native 5G requires the ability to test and assure every phase of the journey and every stage of the service lifecycle. Spirent solutions test and assure your evolution to 5G across the service lifecycle — from the lab to the production network. Download our poster depicting 5G network functions for a quick look at the overall structure of the 5G network and associated services.