Zhilabs and Stoke have signed an agreement to bring to market a joint RAN (radio access network) analytics solution that enables mobile broadband operators to pinpoint trouble spots in 3G/LTE networks with greater speed and accuracy and take more rapid corrective action.
Operators struggling to capture and process the massive amounts of data generated by video, LTE traffic, M2M and other sources and dealing with billions of events per day have an urgent requirement for solutions providing them with the ability to optimize infrastructure on the fly.
The situation is particularly acute at the interface of the radio access network (RAN) and the evolved packet core (EPC) interface, where interrelated traffic and movement between many LTE nodes make it difficult to correlate, analyze and act on alerts in time to deflect problems.
The joint solution leverages the inherent data collection capabilities of the Stoke security gateway rather than network probes, which are increasingly viewed as expensive and hard to manage, to provide a far more cost-effective and reliable alternative to probes. Combined with the massive processing and insight capabilities of Zhilabs’ technology, the solution provides actionable insight to enable precise remediation of RAN to core traffic issues in real time in the challenging RAN-to-Core area.
“Our RAN analytics solution allows operators to save time, costs and network disruption by finding and solving problems quickly in a particularly challenging area of the network,” said Vikash Varma, President and CEO of Stoke. ”We make it simple for operators to achieve insights which will have a profound impact on their ability to improve customer retention and profitability.”
“LTE network operators can save substantial costs and generate more revenue by correlating and correcting the causes of network outages, RAN congestion or traffic spikes,” added Joan Raventos, CEO of Zhilabs. ”Providers can more quickly understand the relative priority of different customer transaction patterns, instantly troubleshoot usage issues or device problems, and undertake value-based LTE or 3G capacity planning to improve the use of their network assets. This allows them to boost their revenue through marketing initiatives or providing the right price/plan mixes.”
Stoke’s security gateway aggregates, analyzes and encrypts traffic from up to thousands of radio access network (RAN) communications points before it enters the operator core. Zhilabs’ technology collects, analyzes and correlates data from multiple sources, providing unique insight on data traversing the network that enables corrective action to be applied as required. A solution brief, ‘Analytics in Secured LTE — Stoke and Zhilabs’ can be accessed here.
