Gigamon has introduced a new subscriber-based IP sampling paradigm which helps service providers turn big data into manageable data providing greater visibility and insight. The new capabilities in Gigamon’s FlowVUE® application enable users to send overlapping flow samples to multiple analytic tools at the same time. By expanding tool rail depth of analysis, operators can gain a multi-dimensional understanding of subscriber behaviour and deeper traffic insight for improved and actionable intelligence. Service providers are fundamentally transforming how they manage and monitor their networks to keep up with escalating amounts of traffic, new handsets, new real-time services and complex subscriber behaviours. The approach to add more analytic and performance management tools has been challenging due to variable rate interfaces and variable throughput processing capabilities - making it previously impossible to integrate, scale or aggregate disparate traffic to achieve a holistic view of a subscriber’s daily services and device use.
Network performance lags and new technologies are slow to rollout without being de-risked through the insight provided by a centralised tool rail. Many new services are sensitive to delay, jitter and latency forcing customer-service costs to rise and subscriber satisfaction to decrease. The previous inability to dynamically scale traffic to fit the busy hour requirement has caused both tool over- and under-subscription, further draining tool resources and decreasing overall operational efficiency.
Overlapping flow samples deliver service providers richer intelligence & insights
Gigamon’s Visibility Platform with expanded FlowVUE capabilities helps service providers solve these challenges by enabling analytic tools to collect, analyse and gain a multi-dimensional understanding of subscriber behaviour and insight of network traffic. By correlating subscriber identity, traffic type, and subscriber quality of experience, operators can pin-point where network trouble spots reside and what their associated causes are, shortening the analysis time. FlowVUE also increases tool performance by scaling the traffic to fit the attached tool processing throughput capacity as the network traffic volumes shift during high and low peak times. Service providers gain new operational efficiencies by avoiding the unnecessary traffic and tool dimensioning of over- and under-subscription across a wide set of tools. The optimised throughput processing allows operators to dimension their tool rail for a specific percentage of the typical busy hour and apply cost savings elsewhere on their network.
“For the first time, service providers can experience higher levels of subscriber-aware visibility and intelligence to make real-time decisions and improved customer experiences,” said Andy Huckridge, director of service provider solutions at Gigamon. “By centralising and correlating previously siloed data samples with Gigamon’s FlowVUE, service providers can now offer expanded services to their high-value subscribers, create new revenue streams, de-risk new technology rollouts and gain an operational advantage in the process.”
Other key benefits of new traffic scaling with multiple overlapping flow samples include:
- For the first time, security tools can now be driven as part of a centralised tool rail, sharing and seeing traffic with Application Performance Management (APM), Customer Experience Management (CEM) or Network Performance Management (NPM) tools to provide better security coverage
- Raised customer experience standards by allowing service providers to focus less on monitoring traffic and more on enhancing performance
- Optimised infrastructure investments from maximising analytic tool throughput and eliminating tool oversubscription
“Service Providers looking to operationalise Viavi’s full portfolio of solutions want to have the flexibility to provide the right traffic at the right speeds at the right time to the right tools,” said Sameh Yamany, CTO of Viavi Solutions. “Viavi’s Visibility, Intelligence & Analytics tools are engineered to deploy, assure, and optimise the most complex and powerful networks on the planet in order to reduce churn, improve customer lifetime value and profitability. Gigamon’s Visibility Platform with expanded FlowVUE offers a means to extend our capabilities in light of the intensity of today’s subscriber traffic volumes, especially given the move of the industry toward 5G and the Internet of Things. This allows service providers to ensure that end-users enjoy the highest possible quality of experience and application performance in an environment of high traffic growth now and in the future with 5G and IoT.”
“Gigamon’s FlowVUE with overlapping flow samples allows our customers to feed the exact traffic needed to monitor voice quality in real time,” said Eyal Ullert, head of sales & marketing for Voipfuture. “The ability to use overlapping flow sampling allows Voipfuture to provide our joint customers deep insight into their networks, delivering them the root causes and not just the symptoms of performance problems.”
