Network Performance

With Unprecedented Network Complexity, How Can You Quickly Find & Resolve Problems?

With the arrival of 3.5G and 4G data network technology, mobile networks are now more complex than ever before. Many operators are deploying HSPA, HSPA+ or LTE technology in new bands which have varying RF characteristics and most operators are adding new sites and carriers to ramp up their data capacity.

Relative to voice services, data services are inherently more challenging to troubleshoot given the number of applications offered and the complexity of how various factors such as throughput and latency influence the customer’s experience of each application. Furthermore, the introduction of a multitude of complex smartphones and new core network technology adds even more complexity to the network. The net impact of these layers of network complexity is a dramatic, corresponding increase in the complexity of performance problems.

With a rush of increasingly complex network problems, and few, if any, new engineering resources, many operators are struggling to maintain an excellent customer experience. Problem resolution has become increasingly inefficient and ineffective as problems with high business impact are lost in a sea of issues, and problems which have very simple root-causes (such as temporary or planned outages), take up an inordinate amount of effort.

Automate Problem Detection and Diagnosis with Actix.

Our solution for analyzing Network Performance addresses these challenges in two form-factors:

Desktop – Our Analyzer desktop post-processing software
Platform – Our ActixOne optimization platform

The platform-based approach provides an enhanced level of automation and analytics based on its ability to automatically process and manage data from across the mobile network. The desktop-based approach can be used on a standalone basis, or as a drill-down client of the platform, to enable advanced and ad hoc analysis of data managed by the platform.

Analyzer enables optimization teams to analyze Network Performance using drive survey and subscriber trace data. The software analyzes IP and application layers to identify data service issues and then uses automated diagnostics to detect RF problems causing the issues. Using this information, experienced optimization teams can determine solutions to address the issues. This approach is ideal for smaller teams of expert users, who may need to perform advanced or ad hoc analyses of the data.

ActixOne enables optimization teams to correlate information from network OSS, subscriber trace, drive survey and planning data sources for day-to-day analysis of Network Performance. All issues are ranked based on potential business impact, and then advanced diagnostics isolate the part of the network responsible for the issue and attempt to diagnose the root cause. Optimization teams are then presented with a prioritized list of issues, which may be tracked from inception to resolution including hand-offs to other groups.

Specific categories of diagnostics include detection of break-fix issues, especially non-alarmed RF hardware issues, sleeping cells, voice and data retainability and accessibility issues and mobility failures.

Problem categories for re-active diagnostics

A rule-triggered alert identifying congestion due to high-capacity

The ability of ActixOne to rank issues based on business impact ensures the most important issues are addressed first, whereas the ability of the solution to automatically identify root causes ensures the right teams quickly start working to resolve the issue. The net result is a dramatic improvement in efficiency. In live deployments, efficiencies of 50% or more have been documented across optimization teams.