Network Performance

The quality of VoIP calls is more likely to vary than the quality known from the old TDM world. A shared packet-switched transport with many complex devices and networks simply has many problem sources. This becomes evident as the amount of traffic increases. Keeping the IP network under control is thus vital to the flawless operation of any VoIP service. The VOIPFUTURE system provides all the relevant information required for VoIP network management.  The probes generate quality data records (QDR) for every 5 s segment of every stream on a monitored link. Examples of the detailed in-call information contained in each QDR include:

• jitter & packet inter-arrival time histograms,
• packet loss & burst loss histograms,
• used DSCP code points and
• indicators for different impairment types, e.g. network overload.

The VOIPFUTURE metric is the enabler for performance management in VoIP networks. All analysis and diagnostic data is processed by the Application Manager and stored in a high-performance data warehouse. The analysis and diagnostic data drives the many powerful features of the VOIPFUTURE system, such as root cause analysis, alarming and reporting.

Root Cause Analysis

Finding the source of impairments is greatly simplified by VOIPFUTURE’s pattern matching technology. It identifies unique patterns in the raw monitoring data, which for example allows searching for all RTP streams suffering from a network overload condition or other specific impairments – root cause analysis cannot be easier than this. VOIPFUTURE constantly updates the pattern recognition engine with newly discovered impairment patterns. Instead of searching for specific impairment types, it is also possible to drill down directly from a high-level service quality view to single QDRs with 5 s detail. This allows finding yet unqualified reasons for bad user experience.

Alarming and Reporting

The VOIPFUTURE solution can warn the user of existing or immanent quality degradations, which have or may have a negative impact on the customer experience. With the entire data warehouse at hand, alarm triggers are manifold. This way a CSP may proactively react to minimal changes in the network performance even before customers complain and before service level agreements (SLA) are violated.
Reports can be generated for arbitrary groups of endpoints or VoIP sessions. This can be done either on demand or based on report templates. Reports are available in CSV format for easy post-processing in spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice. Custom report interfaces for feeding data into dedicated reporting systems and third party OSS/BSS systems are also available.
These and other VOIPFUTURE features are the enablers for effective network performance management, including troubleshooting, proactive network optimization and network health checks. The key differentiator is the VOIPFUTURE metric, which is also at the heart of the VoIP Customer Experience Management solution.