NetScout Continues Transformation of Service Assurance for Next Generation Mobile IP Networks

NetScout Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: NTCT) today announced the extension of its Unified Service Delivery Management strategy and framework with the availability of nGenius® Subscriber Intelligence, providing highly scalable subscriber session-level analysis for next generation Internet Protocol (IP) networks. As an integrated software module for the widely deployed nGenius Service Assurance Solution, nGenius Subscriber Intelligence provides mobile operators a comprehensive session-oriented view of the subscribers’ experience for voice, video and data services. This extends the operational and business value of the overall nGenius solution, enabling mobile operators to track real time and historical performance metrics from aggregate service views, to individual subscriber sessions, down to deep packet-level analysis to better optimize the service delivery environment and simplify and accelerate the identification of service delivery problems in 2.5G and 3G wireless technology environments.

As mobile networks continue to shift from delivering basic voice and text communications to rich media, entertainment and broadband services, business users and consumers have high expectations for their network experience and are demanding faster access with higher reliability and service quality. New media-centric smartphones and a growing population of mobile broadband users are choking networks and creating significant challenges from both an operational and profitability perspective. Managing converged service delivery over modern IP networks poses new challenges and mobile operators have been unable to effectively address these challenges with traditional circuit-oriented performance management approaches and workflows used in legacy networks. Traditional approaches are not aligned with how IP networks operate, do not scale to support the explosive growth in data traffic, and their high cost has limited the wide-spread deployment of instrumentation necessary to monitor both user plane and control plane traffic. Because of the complex nature of how services are delivered over next generation IP networks, operators need comprehensive, always-on visibility into all traffic, with flexible service and subscriber level granularity to best assure service delivery and manage the user experience.

Deployed at more than 120 service providers in 39 countries, the nGenius Service Assurance Solution provides a unified service delivery management framework to deliver unprecedented real-time and historical analysis and reporting for complex multi-protocol IP networks. Building on the company’s 25 year history of continued innovation and evolution of packet-flow technology, the nGenius solution captures and analyzes both user plane and control plane IP traffic to enable a granular understanding of subscriber experience along with network, application and service performance to deliver the most complete view of an end-to-end IP service delivery environment. In addition to supporting wireline and cable operator environments, the nGenius solution has been widely deployed in IP mobile networks and provides a direct path to support evolution to IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) implementations and fourth generation (4G) technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE).

"Mobile operators face significant challenges managing the increased volumes of data traffic,” said Patrick Kelly, research director at Analysis Mason. "Just as the nature and volume of mobile traffic is changing, so must the way in which it is managed. Operators need service monitoring capabilities that have been specifically designed for IP networks, with a complete view of traffic, to help them deliver a high quality subscriber experience, minimize service outages and manage the explosive traffic growth. NetScout has gained critical mass and credibility in the service provider market, growing its business at triple digit growth rates over the past two years.”

Purpose-built for next generation IP networks, nGenius Subscriber Intelligence cost-effectively analyzes both user plane and control plane traffic to reveal how network and application interdependencies affect overall service performance and impact subscriber experience. Addressing growing mobile data traffic volumes, nGenius Subscriber Intelligence provides highly scalable and actionable visibility into subscribers, services and network traffic with a simplified workflow optimized for IP networks. Operators can now visualize complete subscriber sessions in real-time, including both service and network control traffic, from the data center, to the mobile core, to the cell tower to instantly expose specific links or areas of the network with high traffic volumes or service failures. The software’s versatile and intuitive graphical user interface provides correlated and contextual views by subscriber, application, host, network element, Access Point Name (APN) and handset. Operators can selectively view traffic by individual subscriber, by classes of subscribers, by types of sessions or even by certain types of handsets to dramatically accelerate the identification of causes of performance degradations and service delivery problems.

"Bell Mobility built its network management infrastructure using the nGenius Service Assurance platforms to improve visibility and troubleshooting of the EVDO network in 2006. With the introduction of the HSPA network, the solution has been scaled to cover critical points on the new network and build further intelligence into our Network Management practices,” said Stefan Gillon, Director of Core Networks and Engineering at Bell Mobility. "Following an in-depth evaluation, Bell Mobility is confident that the addition of Subscriber Intelligence to the Service Assurance platform will further enhance our ability to deliver to our clients the high levels of service they have come to expect.”

Massive Scale Through Rich Metadata

To address growing mobile data traffic volumes and simplify the analysis of highly complex IP service traffic, NetScout has introduced Extended Data Record (xDR) technology for its existing nGenius InfiniStream® appliances. This innovative and highly scalable metadata dramatically reduces the data required to reconstruct end-to-end subscriber sessions, increasing the ability to capture, analyze and store massive volumes of multi-protocol subscriber traffic. Generated and correlated in real-time from continuously captured IP packets, robust xDR metadata is created for every subscriber transaction and stored locally across distributed appliances enabling nGenius Subscriber Intelligence to rapidly construct an on-demand per-session, correlated, hop-by-hop analysis of subscriber, service and network performance. Since all xDR metadata is created from the actual network packets, operators can seamlessly move from metadata-based analysis to deep packet protocol analysis from a single, unified platform.

Fully Unified Solution Leverages Existing Investments

nGenius Subscriber Intelligence leverages the same Gigabit and 10 Gigabit nGenius InfiniStream Intelligent Deep Packet Capture appliances used by the entire family of nGenius Service Assurance modules. This enables operators to reduce costs and avoid incremental investments, while ensuring consistent information across the nGenius application modules.

Easy-to-use, thin-client dashboards facilitate IP-optimized, service-centric workflows, streamlining navigation between the nGenius modules to more efficiently analyze user experience trends, proactively spot degradation and performance issues and optimize end-to-end service delivery. Customizable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) detect anomalous behavior to provide intelligent early warning when services and/or subscribers are affected by performance degradations. Operators can systematically drill-down from an aggregate service view, in nGenius K2 Service Delivery Manager, into a specific subscriber session to instantly pinpoint locations and causes of performance problems. Operators can also analyze associated packet flows and performance metrics with the nGenius Performance Manager, and drill even further to perform on-demand packet level protocol analysis using the suite of Sniffer® Analysis applications.

Extended Use Across the Organization

To leverage existing Operational Support Systems (OSS) investments, lower opex and facilitate consistent access to critical performance data across the operator organization, the nGenius Service Assurance Solution integrates with third-party and internally developed OSS environments. As an invaluable tool for the network operations and engineering groups, the nGenius Service Assurance Solution brings a versatile and meaningful perspective of subscriber service consumption that is increasingly being shared across extended operational groups such as customer care, marketing, planning, sales and product management. Its combined perspective of the subscriber and the services consumed enables greater synergy across the entire organization to drive intelligent technical and business decisions, protect the user experience, improve resource optimization and enhance agility to accelerate the introduction of new handsets and services.

"Just as IP has transformed service provider networks, NetScout has transformed the way service providers assure service delivery over next generation IP networks,” said Steven Shalita, vice president, marketing for NetScout. "The introduction of nGenius Subscriber Intelligence strengthens our technology and market leadership in the service provider market. Building on the strong technology and deployment foundation of our nGenius Service Assurance Solution, nGenius Subscriber Intelligence takes IP service assurance to the next level by providing mobile operators with a purpose-built tool and service-aligned workflows optimized for IP transformation. This allows mobile operators to finally close the visibility gap between subscribers, services and networks with more timely, unified and consistent information to better solve problems, understand subscriber value, and identify high bandwidth consumers and service trends. Consequently, operators can make better business decisions, elevate the user experience, expand customer loyalty and improve the profitability of services delivered.”

Availability

The nGenius Subscriber Intelligence software module is available and shipping now. It is fully integrated and works in unison with the full portfolio of nGenius Service Assurance applications. To date, two tier-one North American mobile operators have already purchased the product. In addition, five global operators have successfully completed trials and another four trials are currently in progress. NetScout xDR technology is available now with nGenius InfiniStream software release 4.8 at no cost to customers under MasterCare maintenance agreements. Please contact NetScout or a NetScout authorized reseller for more information.

About NetScout Systems

NetScout Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTCT) is the market leader in Unified Service Delivery Management enabling comprehensive end-to-end network and application assurance. For 25 years, NetScout has delivered breakthrough packet-flow technology that provides trusted and comprehensive real-time network and application performance intelligence enabling unified assurance of the network, applications and users. These solutions enable IT staff to predict, preempt and resolve network and service delivery problems while facilitating the optimization and capacity planning of the network infrastructure. NetScout nGenius® and Sniffer® solutions are deployed at more than 20,000 of the world’s largest enterprises, government agencies, and service providers, on over 740,000 network segments to assure the network, applications, and service delivery to their users and customers. More information about NetScout Systems, Inc. is available at http://www.netscout.com.

NetScout, the NetScout Logo, nGenius, InfiniStream and Sniffer are registered trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.