L’exploitation des données

KPI generation

For data-driven operations to be successful you need data. Specifically you need a broad range of key performance indicators for services, networks and customers. Active probing solutions are the best way to derive end-to-end service KPIs while passive methods such as SNMP polling are good for getting equipment and network KPIs. Derived KPI metrics, such as a mean opinion score (MOS), provide good insight into the customer’s experience.

When deriving service metrics using active probing, it is becoming more and more critical to have one-way metrics which provide an independent view of the transmit and receive directions. Many services are highly asymmetric in nature and therefore may not experience the same delay in both directions. Additionally, in SDN networks, there’s no guarantee that the transmit and receive direction will follow the same path.

EXFO has an extensive portfolio of active probing solutions, both physical and virtual, as well as the tools and systems to gather, correlate and analyze network, service and customer KPIs from many sources, including 3rd party devices.

How EXFO helps

Correlation and inference

By instrumenting every service and extracting indicators from the network, carriers will have all the data they need to understand how the network and services are performing. The problem is, most of this detail is simply unstructured data and virtually impossible to work with. What’s really needed is a filtered view of the data which highlights trends and out-of-specification performance, and shows any possible correlation between unrelated events. Having this allows operations teams to see the bigger picture and understand how many subtle, otherwise undetected changes may be adding up to cause a service impacting event. And by working on real-time KPI data, the time to detect, determine a root cause, and repair are minimized.

EXFO has KPI correlation and analytics tools, including real-time topology mapping to address the ever changing SDN environment, to enable your operations team to see the big picture and find that proverbial needle in the haystack.

How EXFO helps

Topology mapping

A critical part of any network operations function is an accurate view of the network infrastructure and service topology. Keeping this view up-to-date and accurate has long been an issue, even in traditional physical networks. The transformation of the network towards one that is hybrid or fully virtualized which leverages SDN and NFV, will make this task even harder. SDN, by its very nature, will continuously optimize the network to address performance issues and failures. At the same time, the orchestration system may create new virtual elements, such as routers, to address capacity issues. Since much of this is expected to happen autonomously, keeping an up-to-date view becomes even more difficult.

Real-time, automated topology mapping provides an ideal solution to this problem by constantly ‘discovering’ changes in the service topology and providing the live topology as a service to applications that may need it for critical activities like fault correlation or capacity reservation.

EXFO has the analytics and topology discovery tools needed to enable operations teams to keep the network running flawlessly.

How EXFO helps

Actionable insight

In the end, data-driven operations is all about actionable insight. Having the data, correlating and analyzing it is all good, but what’s most important is answering the question - “what needs to be done next?” Of course, the answer to this question depends on many factors, each of which needs to be considered in an unbiased, policy driven way to minimize risk to the company and maximize efficiency.

Data-driven operations addresses this question. By having visibility into the ‘big picture’ and consistently applying policy rules, a prioritized plan of attack can be quickly developed and updated as conditions change, ensuring the best use of operations personnel and least impact on customers. 

EXFO has the analytics and topology discovery tools needed to allow a carrier’s operations team to keep the network running flawlessly.

How EXFO helps