ANALYSIS & OPINION: TEST & MEASUREMENT
Service providers must now work to make the network invisible g
Show me the money What end-users want is seamless broadband connectivity – a network that is almost ‘invisible’ – so that their applications can work optimally together. Tat said, operators face an interesting challenge in monetising this invisible network – if a customer is already paying for 1G of broadband connectivity, why would they pay beyond this if they aren’t going to see the difference in their application outcomes? What’s more, service providers don’t want to invest in upgrading their networks if their customers aren’t going to notice it – meaning they must begin reinvesting their time and money in other aspects of connectivity. It is no longer service providers’ jobs to
make the network faster, they must now make the network invisible, where everything becomes tactile and just works. When it comes to the nity grity of networks, there is litle interaction between applications and the network itself. Even though the applications that leverage broadband networks are delivering increasingly sophisticated value to consumers, they are relatively simplistic from a networking perspective – they are just mechanisms that ship packets across the network. Te only thing they know about the performance of the network is how long the packets take to get to their destination, and whether they got there in the first place. Tis means that the only interactions they have with the network is in their delay and loss characteristics. Service providers must begin to understand
how these applications work and the key factors which drive good use of application outcomes. Quality is now becoming the buzzword of delivering good outcomes to consumers and is triggering operators to turn their atention away from speed to new methods. Historically, the industry has looked at data rate and ping time to
16 FiBRE SYSTEMS n Issue 25 n Autumn 2019
address the quality of the network. Broadband Forum’s QED project uses Quality Atenuation methods to deliver greater insight into quality of experience and application outcomes.
Performance framework Led by Vodafone and Predictable Network Solutions (PNSol), the initiative creates a framework for capturing, measuring, managing and manipulating the performance aspects of networks, as well as the services they enable. Te project provides a platorm for players across the delivery chain to elevate broadband experience by improving management of network latency, consistency, predictability and reliability. Tis work comes at a critical time, as new
applications place tremendous strain on networks; Quality Atenuation provides a new approach to systems performance analysis, delivering far greater insight than simply using bandwidth as a proxy when addressing the quality of experience for the consumer. Having already trialled Quality Atenuation
over a range of fixed access technologies in its own network, Vodafone has successfully identified broadband performance characteristics that ‘traditional’ packet layer performance techniques and tools failed to reveal. Quality Atenuation also gives service
providers a new layer of visibility into their networks, providing them with the tools to actively test, optimise and trouble-shoot their in- home networks, enabling them to be proactive by preventing and isolating any issues before their customers notice there is one – thereby assuring greater Quality of Experience (QoE).
Application layer testing Unfortunately, delivering exceptional QoE isn’t as simple as that – end-users’ QoE is dependent
not only on network performance, but each application’s sensitivity to different network performance characteristics. Tat is why work by the Broadband Forum is also being done in application layer testing (ALT), to provide frameworks for measurement of the broadband experience. Te latest ALT initiative aims to go beyond
typical lower layer techniques by defining a set of traffic generation techniques, test methodologies, and performance metrics that focus on the traffic generated by applications running over the network. For instance, when a subscriber streams a video
over a device in their home, if the receiver buffer in the video client empties or the streaming rate is reduced, it can result in a video ‘freeze’ which will significantly reduce the consumer’s QoE. By observing these occurrences directly at the application layer, rather than the network, service providers can predict QoE more directly to prevent significant drops in service. Until now, the industry has been on a constant
treadmill of cranking up the speed. However, there is more to keeping customers satisfied than speed and in today’s ultra-connected and competitive world, service providers can’t afford to provide anything less than superior QoE. Nevertheless, every participant in the value-chain, from access equipment vendors to consumer electronics manufacturers to media service provider giants like Netlix and Google, are expected to benefit significantly from these QoE initiatives. Consumers may not realise it yet, but the era of
the ‘need for speed’ has passed. Teir emerging needs and expectations are demanding an invisible network – one that looks holistically at the broadband experience and delivers across a variety of metrics. n Robin Mersh is CEO at the Broadband Forum
www.fibre-systems.com @fibresystemsmag
Shuterstocks
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