SOLUTIONS BRIEF
WiFi Service Assurance
Deliver a high Quality of Experience
for WiFi Subscribers
Use Cases for
WiFi Service
Assurance
Procera’s sophisticated network
intelligence, traffic management
and policy enforcement
capabilities deliver a higher
Quality of Experience (QoE)
for WiFi subscribers.
Measuring WiFi Network Congestion and
Network Service Quality
Identify capacity related quality issues
and proactively improve capacity and the
customer experience.
Troubleshooting Individual Subscriber
Experience in WiFi
Leveraging subscriber awareness,
troubleshoot the subscriber experience
for a single subscriber on a WiFi network
to reduce churn, improve operational
efficiency, and reduce CAPEX.
Diagnostics for Critical IP Services in
WiFi Networks
Monitor the KPIs for connectivity, application
performance, network quality, and radio
quality to ensure a high WiFi QoE.
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
WiFi is becoming a crucial technology for service providers and the enterprise market.
For service providers, WiFi is now acting as an extension to cellular networks and fixed
connectivity. Although WiFi is mostly free, consumers have started to differentiate
between bad WiFi and high quality WiFi. This is critical for service providers who use
WiFi as an offload solution, since cellular customers expect a similar or better quality of
experience. WiFi is also considered an essential infrastructure in public venues like airports
and stadiums, since it is the designated offloading technology for mobile networks, and
poor Quality of Experience (QoE) can go viral, harming an operator’s reputation.
In the enterprise arena, many companies are now becoming wireless-only workplaces where
wired connections are not even provided to the employees on their desks. This huge shift towards
workplace mobility is due to the fact that a large percentage of the workers are constantly on the
road and they rely heavily on WiFi when at work. This results in IT departments in these enterprises
becoming premise operators that rely on network QoE to drive workers’ productivity in the
company, or outsourcing their WiFi to an operator as a managed service.
WiFi operators need solutions that can deliver the critical KPIs for their network to ensure that
they can compete on the quality of their WiFi network. This includes both network-level KPIs as
well as individual Access Points and individual subscribers on the netwok, both in real-time and
for planning purposes. To be cost-effective for WiFi deployments, any service assurance solution
needs to be deployed as a virtual instance on COTS hardware.
USE CASE TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Procera’s WiFi Service Assurance solutions take advantage of Procera’s industry-leading
application intelligence and a broad set of integrations with network and subscriber attributes
to provide contextual, real-time traffic management tailored to enhance QoE. These solutions
can all be deployed in a virtual software footprint on COTS hardware. In addition to managing
congestion, Procera’s Engineering Insights and ScoreCard measure the effects of traffic
management to provide a feedback loop on WiFi network quality for the operator, delivering a
closed loop solution.
Procera approaches WiFi congestion management and quality issue from two angles.
Procera’s network intelligence and analytics technologies provide a complete picture of the
WiFi network regardless of the infrastructure vendors and deployment architecture involved,
allowing operators to identify network congestion related issues (hotspots, coverage holes)
proactively, prioritize capacity planning initiatives and manage available resources to the fullest
extent. Procera’s traffic management solution - including fair-split shaping - balances the traffic
so that capacity is distributed fairly between users and QoE can be managed properly during
time of congestion.
Customer Care, Network Operations, Network Engineering, and the CTO/CIO groups for WiFi
operators can all benefit from this solution offering.
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SOLUTIONS BRIEF
USE CASES
USE CASE
COMPONENTS
There are multiple use cases that are part of the WiFi Service Assurance solution with
PacketLogic software. All Use Cases rely on the PacketLogic Base software, DRDL &
Signatures, and optional software licenses can be added to provide more subscriber and
service visibility and control options. The use cases range from network-wide service
assurance to a single subscriber view for customer care.
Mandatory Licenses
• PacketLogic Base
Measuring WiFi Network Congestion and Network Service Quality
• DRDL & Signatures
The quality of WiFi networks fro the subscriber’s perspective depends on many different
aspects of the WiFi infrastucture performing well. Procera’s aggregates these critical KPIs
and overlays the topology and subscriber intelligence on the data to provide advanced
visualization and forensics. The data collected includes data plane traffic from subscribers,
subscriber authentication/accounting messaging, and even SNMP and Syslog information to
glean channel and MAC to radio assignments. With this information, the WiFi operator has
a more comprehensive view of the subscriber experience being delivered by their network,
especially when ScoreCard KPIs and location awareness are applied to a network heatmap.
Key operational processes that can be enhanced with this solution to save money include:
Optional Licenses
• Integration for Enrichment
• Congestion Management
& Filtering
• Engineering Insights
• ScoreCard
• Insights Storage
• IPFix
• Policy Enforcement w/Gx
•
Baselining network performance
•
Before/After analysis for network changes
•
Root Cause Analysis for problems to WAN link, Internet, or WiFi Access
•
Automated alerts and ticketing based on performance degradation
•
Identify chronic site issues
•
Worst AP Analysis
•
Detecting overloaded or outlier APs, nodes, porals or WLCs
The solution also can identify opportunities of revenue enhancement where premium services
can be offered for heavy users, rank potential marketing sponsorship opprotunties through
application and content analysis, and upsell to venue owners for high profile events
Figure 1
WIFI SERVICE ASSURANCE DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE
DATA CENTER/POP
CUSTOMER CARE PORTALS
VENUE A
SMB-A
SMB-A
OPERATIONS
WLE
Tunneled
Traffic
PSM
CNAT
SMB-B
OPERATIONS
WiFi APs
DHCP
VENUE B
Analytics
& Trending
WiFi Customer
Care
Realtime
visibility
Analytics
& Trending
WiFi Customer
Care
REPORTING & OPERATIONS (BSS/OSS)
WLC
SMB-B
Realtime
visibility
Insights
vPIC
Data Center
/Cloud
DNS
Tunneled
Traffic
WiFi APs
PRE
COTS SERVER &
HYPERVISOR
2
Service
Assurance
Analytics
Customer
Care
Intelligent
Charging
Parental
Usage
Controls Management
WiFi Customer
Care
Threat
Mitigation
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SOLUTIONS
CASE STUDY
BRIEF
Diagnostics for Critical IP Services in WiFi
Proactive monitoring of critical services is important for WiFi networks, as users typically do
not provide feedback when critical IP services are malfunctioning – they simply give up
trying to connect. Many large tier 1 operators who provide WiFi infrastructure to large
enterprises and venues do not usually own infrastructure services like DHCP, RADIUS and DNS.
They rely on enterprise or venue owner’s IT services team to provide this facility. It is common to
attribute WiFi services related issues to poor wireless coverage and interference. Without
visibility into services infrastructure, it is difficult for WiFi provider and IT services team to evaluate
the issues fairly.
This use-case focuses on the diagnostics of control plane applications like DHCP, RADIUS
authentication, and DNS services. This directly impacts connectivity and application
performance domains. In a functional radio environment, the aforementioned services
determine whether a user is able to access the network. The ability to monitor and report on
the performance of these services is key in achieving a high quality of user experience, and
helps to reduce OPEX by proactively identifying problematic network elements. Procera
provides detailed logging of each DHCP, RADIUS, and DNS transaction, which can
be used for real time network troubleshooting, or create historical trends that can be
visualized in formats suitable for executive reporting.
Figure 2
WIFI SERVICE ASSURANCE DIAGNOSTICS
Monitoring & Diagnostic Tools
PSM
DHCP, RADIUS Feed
DHCP RADIUS
Customer
Care
ODBC
Tableau
Reports
DNS
DHCP, errors
RADIUS Authentication errors
DHCP, DNS response Time, Timeouts
Application Scoring
Device information
Insights
A
B
C
D
E
F
LiveView
User
Access Point
WiFi Controller
PRE
3
Internet
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SOLUTIONS
CASE STUDY
BRIEF
“Procera’s platform
is a great fit for our
NFV-driven architecture.
Their ability to deliver
a fully virtualized
PacketLogic solution
enabled Boingo to
achieve the ROI that it
needed for its business
model. We evaluated
hardware-based
solutions, but they did
not meet our cost or
deployment flexibility
requirements.”
Derek Petersen,
CTO, Boingo Wireless
Troubleshooting Individual Subscriber Experience in WiFi
In a WiFi network, QOE metrics can be summarized into four areas:
• Connectivity – users acquire IP addresses and sign onto network through login portal
•
Application Performance – responsiveness of DNS queries, VoWiFi / VoIP jitter and loss,
video stalls, web page load time
•
Network KPIs – internal / external round-trip time, packet loss, throughput
•
Radio Environment – signal quality measurements such as RSSI, SNR
PacketLogic offers comprehensive monitoring and diagnostic solutions covering each of the
four areas, ensuring every subscriber is receiving the best possible quality of experience:
•
Detailed logging of every DHCP transaction, allowing operators to monitor the delay in
subscribers acquiring DHCP address, and percentage of DHCP timeouts
•
Detailed logging of every RADIUS transaction, allowing operators to monitor the
percentage of subscribers unable to access the network due to authentication error
•
DNS response time for DNS queries and the queried domain, as well as response errors
•
Consolidated application scoring for seven different application categories: Web
Browsing, Video Streaming, VoIP, Gaming, Social Media, File Upload, and File Download
•
Visibility into user’s device, operating system, web browser, and software versions
•
Detect presence of malware that negatively impacts user experience
•
Measures network performance (RTT, loss, throughput) of individual subscribers
•
Characterize a user’s RF environment based on statistics reported by the WLC
Procera’s solution can reduce churn by proactivley monitoring high value subscribers, improve
operational efficiency by increasing first call resolution for customer care agents, and empower
operators for make informed investment decisions based on the impact of subscriber QoE.
Procera’s Unique Benefits for WiFi Service Assurance
• Integrations with leading WiFi infrastructure vendors
Tight integration with the WiFi infrastructure equipment gives a real-time view of the
network that includes location and subscriber awareness down to an individual radio
channel. Without this integration, true service assurance will not be possible to identify QoE
hotspots, coverage holes, or subscriber concentration issues that result in poor QoE.
• Application Awareness to deliver a high Quality of Experience
Procera’s application intelligence powered by the DRDL engine delivers the industry’s
most granular and comprehensive signatures database. Since different application types
have different requirements for network quality, applying application awareness to fair
usage ensures that the perceived quality of experience for key applications can be met
or exceeded.
• Holistic end-to-end view of subscriber experience
The combination of enrichment attributes to the application and QoE awareness garnered
through DRDL and ScoreCard provides superior insights into devices, application, content,
location, and quality metrics even when deployed centrally in a large WiFi network.
ScoreCard metrics can identify not only congestion hotspots, but also identify areas where
radio quality issues are degrading network quality.
• Quality of Experience Analytics with Engineering Insights and ScoreCard
Measuring the delivered quality of experience is critical to guiding investments in network
infrastructure. Engineering Insights identifies key trends in service demographics for
subscribers, and ScoreCard focuses on the quality of experience delivered to subscribers.
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SOLUTIONS BRIEF
Procera Networks
delivers fully virtualized
WiFi Service
Assurance solutions
utilizing sophisticated
queuing technology
combined with
subscriber, location,
service plan and
application awareness
CONCLUSION
Procera’s WiFi Service Assurance solutions deliver end-to-end visibility for both individual
WiFi subscribers as well as a quality-centric view of the entire network. With WiFi operators
increasingly focusing on network quality as a competitive differentiator, especially for mobile
data offload, Service Assurance solutions are critical components of any WiFi deployment.
Procera’s extensive integraton with the WLAN infrastructure as well as the BSS/OSS layer
combined with closed loop actioning to improve network quality goes above and beyond
passive-only service assurance solutions.
Contact your Procera sales representative to find
out more about this solution and how it can help
you transform your business.
v20170510
ABOUT PROCERA NETWORKS
Procera Networks, the global Network Intelligence company, is revolutionizing the way operators and vendors monitor, manage and monetize their
network traffic. Elevate your business value and improve customer experience with Procera’s sophisticated intelligence solutions.
For more information, visit proceranetworks.com or follow Procera on Twitter at @ProceraNetworks.
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