Pipeline Publishing, Volume 3, Issue 2

	This Month's Issue:
	Time for a Check Up

Building a Smarter System:

By Rami Hadar - Allot Communications

Applying Network Business Intelligence for Proactive QoS

In a world where consumers have a nearly unprecedented choice of service providers, it is more important than ever for providers to keep customers happy and loyal. But, many companies wait until they hear about problems with service levels from customers before implementing change. In many cases, this reactive approach to managing quality of service (QoS) is simply “too little, too late” – once customers have a negative service experience, they are already looking at new providers.

A proactive approach to manage QoS is much more effective, but how can you predict problems before they happen? Network slowdowns, dropped connections, outages, security breaches, usage swings and other issues tend to happen with very little (if any) warning. And IT staff already spend most of their time putting out fires instead of looking for smoke.

But there’s hope! There are new technologies that monitor and control network activity, helping IT administrators optimize the network for long-term service improvements and make changes in real time to mitigate short-term problems before they impact service levels.

This approach not only improves the performance of the physical network, but can give service providers the flexibility and customer insight they need to introduce new services or tiered packages and create new revenue opportunities. All of these capabilities combined can lead to a higher QoS and happier, more loyal customers.

DPI for service optimization

A new category of network management technologies is beginning to focus on DPI for service optimization. From a technical standpoint, this approach provides IT administrators with a clear understanding of the nature of all traffic flows crossing the network, through inspecting the packets on the network.

From a business perspective, however, DPI for service optimization is the key to adding a layer of business “intelligence” to the network (some even call it Layer 8). By having visibility into the network, and creating business rules for minimums standards of service, companies can define optimal levels of service on the network and enforce them, regardless of most external forces, such as usage swings.

This approach is vastly different from how most service providers manage their networks today. As noted, many service providers react to problems instead of managing the network

"...this approach provides IT administrators with a clear understanding of the nature of all traffic flows..."

in a way that helps to avoid them. In fact, the most common reaction to most service provider network issues is to purchase more bandwidth. Unfortunately, most providers that choose this route find that their new, costly additional bandwidth is consumed almost immediately, landing the provider back in the same situation they were in before.

So, why isn’t more bandwidth enough?

With the growing popularity of triple play voice/data/video services and file sharing, the need for effective QoS has become much broader. In other words, networks are no longer about speeds, feeds and capacity; they are about providing crucial visibility of network usage and user behavior. Adding intelligence to the network transforms a dumb infrastructure into a network capable of differentiating traffic by nature, instantly provisioning resources where and when needed and self adapting its behaviour to external conditions, especially in case of threatening and dangerous attacks occurrences.

A good way to visualize business network intelligence is to think about an airport. Traffic controllers can’t just add another runway or speed up the arrival and departure of planes – runways would clog and safety would be compromised. But, by knowing exactly which aircraft are travelling to and from destinations, controllers can optimize the traffic flow to maintain efficient and safe travel for everyone. They can allocate planes of different sizes to different runways and prioritize flights based in the type of departure (domestic or international). This approach ensures that all airline customers get to their intended destination. If one runway closes, controllers can switch traffic to another runway and re-prioritize traffic to maintain the flow.

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