5G enterprise services are changing the network testing dynamic completely
New enterprise services like private networks and network slicing have been at the center of conversations around how telcos can monetize 5G. However, offering these services introduces network complexities that, according to panelists as the Test and Measurement Forum, are changing the network testing dynamic completely.
Mark Watts, associate fellow of global network and technology at Verizon, told attendees that there are three ways in which the carrier views emerging testing needs for 5G services. First, he said, network hardware and software needs to be validated. Then, the network readiness must be assessed: “Whether or not the network itself can provide the type of services that are expected in 2024 and beyond,” he said. And finally, once new services are rolled out, each of those services must be validated from a user point of view to ensure quality of service and experience.
“Whether or not we would use a point-to-point type of test or node-to-node or router-to-router all depends on the type of service that we want to provide and how much flexibility an control we want to have over the network based on these newer services,” Watts shared.
One such new offering is private networks, and because these offer more bespoke network experience, especially when paired with network slicing, Jefferson Wang, senior managing director and cloud first chief strategy and growth officer at Accenture, explained that there will be instances in which a customer just wants the radio on premise, while another wants the local radio and edge compute infrastructure, and still others that ask for the local radio compute on the edge as well as compute infrastructure to achieve full control.
All of these scenarios, Wang continued, require different levels of testing, and depending on the scenario, there are changes to the integration to the RAN transport in the core, the integration to the backend of the enterprise itself and so on. “So, testing takes this new life,” he said, adding that as a result, testing in 5G is moving from a more static process to CI/CD types of processes.
Spirent Communications’ Senior Director of Assurance Strategy Ross Cassan agreed, adding that the company is seeing “a lot of stress” being placed on carriers as they look to implement these new features. And so, for its part, the company is focusing on reducing the amount of noise from the systems that the carriers are experiencing. One way the company does is this by leveraging AI and ML for fault validation, which ensures that once an alert is actually sent up the chain to a telco employee, there really is a validated and repeatable problem. “We are working towards closed loop,” he said. “This is a key step in that journey.”
Further, Cassan shared that it is becoming increasing important to couple this end-to-end monitoring with active network segmentation. “As we move towards things like private networking, enterprise services, slicing all of these different domains in the network have to work together,” he said. “By enabling active assurance across that entire set of domains, being able to run the same test from any interface end-to-end over-the-air, targeting specific nodes … it allows us to very quickly pinpoint the issue and remediate ideally before customers are even impacted.”
