Ixia, a leading provider of network test, visibility and security solutions; Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster; and Anritsu, a global provider of innovative communications test and measurement solutions, have joined forces to demonstrate customer experience assurance (CEA) capabilities on the HPE OpenNFV Platform at Mobile World Congress 2016 (MWC).

User Experience Monitoring in NFV Environments
The ability to monitor user experience is a critical requirement in carrier networks. As carriers move to Network Function Virtualization (NFV), they need to effectively deploy new CEA solutions. The virtualized, integrated solution demonstrated by Ixia, HPE and Anritsu enables carriers to rapidly adopt NFV, and conform to service level agreements (SLAs).

The demonstration at MWC is built on HPE’s OpenNFV architecture using Ixia’s IxLoad to emulate a real-world mobile network. Monitoring of the OpenNFV environment is accomplished with Ixia’s Phantom Virtualization Tap and its virtual GTP Session Controller, as well as Anritsu’s MasterClaw platform. The integrated solution demonstration models CEA in mobile carrier networks by simulating in real-time a football stadium filled with thousands of fans using their mobile phones for voice calls and Internet access concurrently.

CEA solutions are a key element of operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS), and provide customers with:

• Decision-making visibility into network traffic, service usage and user experience for all of the different stakeholders, so abnormal situations can be addressed without delay;
• Dashboard views of individual user’s experience, services and network activity with easy-to-use drill downs into necessary details;
• Data to manage network capacity in accordance with traffic growth and policies.

“The HPE OpenNFV Partner Program was designed to help the telecommunications industry accelerate innovation and launch services faster, more easily and more cost-effectively,” said Werner Schaefer, VP Sales & GTM, Communications Solutions Business, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “This solution demonstration is another example how the OpenNFV ecosystem of partners is providing carriers with validated concepts, valuable guidance and the specific solutions needed to enable their transition to NFV.”

Ixia’s Phantom Virtualization Tap with TapFlow enables proactive monitoring for security, availability and performance with total visibility of inter-VM traffic in NFV deployments. The Phantom solution provides centralized management with an easy-to-use web user interface for total access and control of security and performance monitoring needs. Ixia’s virtual GTP (GPRS Tunneling Protocol) Session Controller, Atlas, receives mobile network traffic from the Ixia Phantom vTap which matches it to unique mobile subscribers and then delivers the correlated traffic load-balanced across the domain of mobile subscribers to Anritsu’s MasterClaw a leading multi-technology monitoring solution that supports NFV/SDN.

“Ixia’s collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Anritsu in the OpenNFV Labs clearly establishes that the ability to capture, correlate and analyze subscriber experience in mobile carrier networks is possible in NFV environments today," said Scott Westlake, VP Business Development, Ixia. “The use of Ixia’s virtual network taps and aggregation products in concert with Anristu’s MasterClaw platform solves an immediate challenge for carriers seeking to migrate key network functions to NFV.”

Anritsu MasterClaw correlates data and creates easy to understand session detail records (XDRs), providing actionable insights via dashboards and next generation customer experience analytics and reports. MasterClaw shares this data with CEA solutions for further correlation, analysis and report sharing with diverse stakeholders.

Neil Tomlinson, COO at Anritsu Service Assurance division stated, “Combining Anritsu’s MasterClaw multi-dimensional assurance solution with Ixia’s virtual network tapping and GTP session correlation capabilities delivers a seamless end-to-end picture of customer experience during the transition to virtualized networks. Rapidly identifying any threats to customer experience is crucial for CSPs to maintain their edge in highly competitive markets, and Anritsu enables unrivaled insights into customer experience via its eoSight^TM and eoMind^TM products based on the latest big data and streaming analytics technology.”