In a recent interview, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Rayan Salha, Product Marketing Director for Automated Assurance at Infovista on the impact of traffic visibility on modern IP networks. Rayan joins us in a series of discussions with leading networking, analytics and cybersecurity companies, assessing the need for traffic filtering technologies that can deliver real-time, granular application awareness. The series explores how advanced analytics power various network functions amidst the rapid growth in traffic and applications.
Ariana: How important is traffic visibility for your suite of solutions and products?
Rayan: Traffic visibility is paramount for Infovista’s Ativa™ Suite for automated assurance, especially considering the increasing prevalence of Over-the-Top (OTT) applications dominating network traffic.
With most traffic being generated from streaming apps such as Netflix, YouTube and many more, poor video experience has become a decisive factor in subscriber churn. The same applies to other key business applications such as Teams and Zoom. In this dynamic landscape, it is crucial to be able to monitor Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics for such applications to assure an optimal customer experience.
Ativa's advanced Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities offer an intricate analysis of the traffic within the network, meticulously examining the content and context of each data packet. This not only ensures precise application classification but also enables detailed sub-categorization based on service types such as messaging, voice, or video calls. DPI plays a pivotal role in understanding traffic usage, customers’ preferences, patterns and perceived quality of experience. These insights empower marketing teams to segment and create personalized offers for subscribers, assist planning teams in optimizing network capacity for seamless service delivery, and enable operations teams to ensure the best customer experience. With our DPI-powered probes, CSPs can seamlessly correlate applications' user plane with the control plane traffic, facilitating swift fault finding, demarcation, and ensuring a holistic and proactive approach to network management and optimization.
Ariana: How effective is deep packet inspection (DPI) technology in addressing today's traffic complexities?
Rayan: Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology stands as an exceptionally effective solution in addressing the intricate demands of today's traffic complexities. Within Infovista’s Ativa, the embedded DPI functionality delivers the intelligence required to analyze even encrypted Over-the-Top (OTT) application traffic, unlocking visibility into subscribers' perceived Quality of Experience (QoE). This extends beyond conventional metrics like video session duration, volume, throughput, and latency, and encompasses intricate details such as video resolution, start/buffering time, the number and duration of freezes, and even a user experience score per Content Delivery Network (CDN) and content provider.
Ativa delivers such comprehensive metrics for encrypted (HTTPS) OTT traffic using advanced algorithms on associated TCP signalling, coupled with deep knowledge of client buffer and playback mechanisms utilized by the most popular OTT video services.
The flexibility of Ativa's DPI solution stands as a testament to its adaptability in addressing multiple use cases, including eMBB, FWA, IoT, and network slicing. This adaptability empowers operators to target diverse segments and foster new revenue streams. For example, in the current landscape of hybrid working, Communication Service Providers are expanding their offerings through unified collaboration solutions, leveraging applications such as Microsoft Operator Connect to seamlessly incorporate PSTN with Microsoft Teams. By leveraging Ativa's DPI and Flexible Field functionalities within the solution, Service Providers gain the ability to monitor and report on Teams sessions per enterprise customer, country, and call type (e.g., conferencing). This real-time monitoring facilitates focused troubleshooting, ensuring compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and maximizing monetization opportunities. The comprehensive and adaptive nature of Ativa's DPI technology positions it as a key enabler for CSPs navigating the complexities of today's market needs and diverse customer use cases.
Product Marketing Director for Automated Assurance at Infovista, Rayan brings nearly two decades of experience in the telecom industry, with a dedicated emphasis on service assurance. With a diverse background encompassing various roles in sales, business development and marketing, Rayan draws from his extensive experience at renowned companies such as Siemens, Nokia, and other prominent service assurance organizations.
This interview is a part of The Fast Mode's Traffic Visibility segment, featuring leading networking, analytics and cybersecurity companies and their views on the importance of network intelligence and DPI for today's IP networks. A research report on this topic will be published in June 2024 - for more information, visit here.
