Telco Customer Use Cases
Next-Generation Services: VoIP, IPTV, IMS
Testing next-generation IP services — or testing functional, interoperability, resilience or security of IP services such as Voice over IP (VoIP), Internet Protocol-based TV (IPTV) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) — is one of the most critical issues facing network operators and their vendors. Using only homegrown test tools and limited conformance and canned or static protocol testing tools, the vendor was falling behind in the testing of the inherent complexity and diversity of next generation networks.
To address these challenges of reliability, availability and security, a rapidly growing number of service providers are turning to Mu’s IP Service testing solution. The broad Mu Test Suite solution helps eliminate software quality issues underlying functional interoperability, reliability and security weaknesses. The problems Mu proactively finds include system crashes, distributed denial of service attacks, and more subtle issues like response-time latency and CPU utilization spikes. Using the Mu approach the vendor proactively and continuously addressed IP Service testing throughout their software development lifecycle (SDLC) to ultimately improve their bottom line.
Mobile, LTE/4G
A tier-one operator customer faced growing complexity in provisioning smart phone voice and data services on its Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based network build-out. This North American operator was planning a network to support mobile data traffic increases of more than a hundredfold over the next five years. They quickly found that conventional load testing or applying canned interoperability test cases by themselves was ineffective. The operator was losing ground in meeting customers’ seemingly insatiable desire for increased mobile coverage and capacity.
Mu Test Suite usage applies IP Service testing to continuously improve service availability necessary for real-time LTE/4G data services. The operator began automating their Systems Integration & Test (SIT) processes to maximize IP service uptime and other key metrics for core data service. As a result of proactively testing the actual services not just vendor products service reliability is trending upwards reducing customer churn and improved bottom line as a result of market-defining LTE/4G service quality. The Mu user has also begun automating their comprehensive Vendor qualification testing of vendor software and hardware products before integration into production network. A final byproduct of IP Service testing was efficient and streamlined actionable field support resolution process with vendors. Mu ensured LTE-based data and voice services met or exceeded the current service availability and reliability levels. The Mu Test Suite was also useful for the prevention of costly service outages, ensuring interoperability and maintaining subscriber base.
MPLS and Routing
A large Mu operator began offering Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) sold directly to large financial, government agencies and other end-users. Unexpected network behavior and IP Service reliability were become competitive problems as new operators began entering the same geographic market. The operator saw an annualized upturn in pricey customer churn and decided to take a proactive stand to achieve higher product quality by testing IP Services throughout their service deployment lifecycle. Many of these carrier services are similar to end-to-end "circuits" provisioned across a multivendor MPLS core. These pseudo-circuits may be "virtual" in the reality of the carrier, but not in the mind of the customer. Years of buying costly time-domain multiplexed (TDM) leased (dedicated, physical) circuits based on ultra-reliable telephone switching technology have built a set of expectations in the mind of the customer. They really do expect "five 9s" (99.999%) of uptime...or more.
Using the Mu Test Suite to test the Functionality, Interoperability and Resilience of vendor’s MPLS-based offerings, this operator improved on their traditional packet-level interconnections (e.g., for connecting ISP networks together, or to provide Internet access to an enterprise customer) or emulated end-to-end virtual circuit services or virtual private [packet] networks. By testing the actual IP Service – not just individual products – the operator built a far more cost-efficient, more feature-rich Data Service offering. Testing the IP Service during design, rollout and even when encountering support requests from the field, the operator has reduced their provisioning and operational costs by more the 25% and moved migrated more customers to packet-based MPLS cores for a higher average revenue per user (ARPU).
IPv6 Networks
This large network operator is among the leaders in building out an IPv6 native backbone routing network infrastructure. Current trends project exhaustion of the primary IANA IPv4 address pool in the 2011 to 2012 timeframe, causing many organizations to accelerate plans for IPv6 deployment. The U.S. Government, for example, has mandated that federal agencies deploy IPv6 in all federal backbones in the next 12 months. Without IPv6's expanded capacity, and fully interoperable vendor deployments, soon the growth of the current-generation Internet will end and few new applications or network build-outs would occur - accompanying revenue growth would drop dramatically. Faced with the lack of integrated testing for Functional, Interoperability, Resilience and Security testing, the operator faced numerous product acceptance problems and IPv4 migration hurdles.
Using the Mu Test Suite, the operator was able to automate the vendor acceptance and interoperability testing of IPv6 deployments. This made their systems are more stable and far less vulnerable to unexpected weaknesses – very important since many of the IPv6 service users are government agency end users. Since IPv6 is new, neither network operators nor product vendors have mastered best practices in programming and deployment in native and transitional environments. The customization capabilities of the Mu Test Suite helped the operator optimize its existing internal IPv6 test cases as well as build new ones far more rapidly to reduce IP Service downtime and service disruptions. Mu helped the operator build processes that methodically isolated and eliminated potential weak spots in new IPv6 IP Service implementations or deployments. For example, prior to Mu dual-stack deployment complexity introduced numerous opportunities for software weaknesses. Using the Mu Test Suite, the customer identified and removed both IPv4 and IPv6 weaknesses prior to the IP Service production rollout.
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