Testing and assuring telecoms networks and services is more important than ever. In the service-based 5G architecture, meeting SLAs and ensuring optimum customer experience at all times through active monitoring of network and service performance is vital for achieving and maintaining competitive advantage and success. Any issues could to customer loss and reputational harm.

B2B2C customers will demand high levels of QoS and SLA delivery

B2B2C customers will demand high QoS and SLA delivery levels. It means that operators need to be innovative, offer service differentiation, and agility, while introducing innovative new services and evolving the network continually.

It means that testing and assuring new differentiated service launches, network upgrades, security patches, and more, in real time and on an on-going basis is paramount. This is true across every generation of mobile technology, not just 5G.

But 5G SBA is set to enable innovative new use cases – such as automated robotics, smart cities and ports, and much more – for business customers. Take the example of dedicated network slices or private networks. Any drop in network performance, say after an upgrade or to correct a bug, could have serious consequences for customers and, in certain cases may breach SLAs.

Success also requires continual innovation under the CI/CD/CT umbrella in order to maintain differentiation and competitiveness. Imagine a new service launch or update. Operators need to measure the impact they have once they go live, check how the network responds, the impact if any it has on customer experience, how other services are affected, and so on.

Test and assurance on a continuous basis

All this demands a new way of testing and assuring performance in your production networks, so that services and slices meet strict SLAs, not just pre-launch but also over their full lifecycle (i.e., active monitoring).

All of this occurs within a significantly broadened multivendor landscape. An upgrade or new service that you release to production, for example, might have a different effect on a network component from one vendor than it does on another.

As well as ensuring testing and validation of services and upgrades pre-launch (see our recent article, ‘Testing and assuring service launches and updates for labs and pre-production teams’), operators must continually ensure that network and service performance always meet the required level in the live network. How can you achieve this?

Emblasoft Evolver is a software-based traffic simulator and test automation platform built for validating and monitoring services in mobile core networks, including the IMS, EPC, SBA and 5G Core. It was designed for operations teams for use across multi-generation network technologies and protocols. It enables real- time active monitoring and automated functional and regression testing.

Active Monitoring provides end-to-end visibility into network and service performance in live networks

Evolver Active Monitoring supports advanced capabilities to ensure that your services and network slices are operating at high QoS, providing real-time, end-to-end visibility across multiple network domains (core, transport, and different cloud infrastructures (public, private, edge).

Evolver’s active monitoring functionality employs software-based agents in the live network, which inject simulated traffic sessions to continuously ensure that the network and services are performing to the required level across multiple parameters, including QoS, QoE, network performance, specific KPIs such as dropped packets, and more.

It simulates realistic subscriber behaviour helping teams detect issues before they impact customers. To find out more download our latest brochure on what Emblasoft Evolver can deliver for operations teams to assure your services in the live network.