Assuring Performance of Carrier-Class Networks and Enterprise Contact Centers

SP-11: Ensuring Service Quality While Increasing RevenueFebruary 4, 2009Daniel Teichman

Senior Product Marketing ManagerVoice Service Assurance

Ensuring Service Quality While Increasing Revenue

• Service Quality Measurement• Getting from Measurement to Monitoring• Service Level Agreement (SLA) Benchmarking• SLA Reporting• VoIP Peering Examples• Summary

Testing and Monitoring LifecyclePre-servicelab testing

Pre-service testing

In-service monitoring

Field service testing for performance

Test service logic and operational functionality

Benchmarking service quality & performanceEnsuring ongoing network and service quality

Service Quality Measurement• Signaling• Media• Passive and / or Active Methodologies

Signaling Quality Measurements• Real-time analysis / reporting of call completion statistics

– Post-Dial Delay, Call Attempts, Calls Successfully Completed, Failed Calls, Answer Seize Ratio, Answer Bid Ratio, Network Efficiency Ratio, Call Setup time, Call Disconnect time, Minutes of Use

• Real-time analysis / reporting on protocol statistics:– SIP packets, SIP Invites, SIP Errors, SIP 1xx / 2xx/ 3xx etc, SIP

Registers, etc.

• Per call capture of signaling quality measures, retained storage for diagnostic and analysis purposes

Media Quality Measurements• More difficult to capture than signaling quality measures

– Includes RTP, as well as DTMF (RFC 2833) and fax (T.38)

• Real-time analysis / reporting of packet and call statistics– Packets Received, Lost, Duplicate, OOS– Jitter, Burst; Gap, Mean Opinion Score (MOS)– Instantaneous or Worst point in call as well as Average per call

• Per call capture of media quality measures, retained storage for diagnostic and analysis purposes

Getting From Measurement to Monitoring

• Measurement gives you data – lots of it!

• Monitoring create value from measurement data. It gives you information for diagnosis, analysis and reporting

• Monitoring enables pro-active behaviors, enhances reactive behaviors

• Correlation, data segmentation and automatic notification of service issues are the three keys to success

Correlation per Call / Session

• Correlate signaling across both trusted and untrusted sides of SBC• Complicated call flows, e.g. SBCs can/will change call Ids• Measure RTP across both trusted and untrusted sides of SBC

Data Segmentation• Network-wide assessment is not sufficient for specific SLAs

• Data segmentation is a mandatory requirement– Per network segment or component– Per interconnect point – Per customer (typically large enterprise)

• Should be part an integral part of the database structure as opposed to a reporting tool– Integration is a must for responsive reporting (when you have

million of records to analyze)– Segmentation has to be easy to apply – could have thousands to

manage

Data Segmentation Example

• Data segmentation by “tagging” Call Detail Information• “Tag” assignment by multiple parameters, such as:

– Phone number digits (country code)– IP address (source and/or destination)– SS7 address (originating and/or destination point code)– VLAN Id

• Combine “tags” to capture multiple “views” of traffic

Automatic Notification of Service Level Issues

• Pro-active integration with “northbound” Network Management systems

• Both network and segmented data based alerts– Network-based addresses internal metrics– Segmentation-based alerts enable isolation to particular

interconnect, peering site, or Enterprise

• Alerts on both signalling and media metrics, such as:– Call Failure rates exceed 1.0% threshold– Average MOS falls below 3.0

SLA Benchmarking• Done by testing live network conditions

– For the network– Per interconnect partner / Enterprise

• Done for specific Key Performance Indicators, such as:– Average / Minimum MOS– Average / Maximum Post Dial Delay– Answer Seize Ratio

• Should be normative across network if possible

SLA Reporting• SLA verification via ongoing monitoring or

via periodic or on-demand testing– For the network– Per interconnect partner / Enterprise

• Trend analysis indicates potential problems or future areas for re-negotiation

VoIP Peering Example 1• Event: Carrier routing table update process fails to complete properly

• Problem: Standard network level alerts will not recognize this problem

• What service quality monitoring does:– Identification of abnormal traffic conditions – low call completion rates– Pro-active alert to Network Management System upon threshold violation– Ability to isolate problem to specific peering partner or peering sites

• Remediation: Re-routing of traffic to alternate carrier

• Net impact: Minimize or avoid customer service disruptions reduce churn minimize revenue loss

VoIP Peering Example 2• Event: SLA compliance dispute between carrier and customer

• Problem: Customer believes VoIP quality falls below agreed SLA

• What service quality monitoring does:– Analysis and reporting on quality measurements specific to customer– Accommodate multi-site, multi-country reporting– Trend analysis over time

• Remediation: Set up periodic capture specific quality metrics from customer sites, using SIP loopback or SIP VQ reporting capabilities

• Net impact: Minimize or avoid future customer disputes maximize revenue potential

Summary• Service Quality Monitoring is MUCH more

than just measurement

• Service Quality Monitoring provides the ability to perform SLA verification and reporting

• More accurate handling of SLAs means more valuable peer and customer relationships