Research shows that networks are becoming progressively more autonomous in an effort to support efficiency and adaptability for advanced use cases. To continue the journey to full autonomous operations within the dynamic 5G ecosystem and beyond, networks need better data sources. High-fidelity curated data can provide the necessary intelligence to determine root cause of subscribers’ experience on the user plane, provide artificial intelligence (AI)-ready data feeds, and support proactive network management—ensuring responsiveness and agility in an increasingly competitive market.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) techniques can help to provide real-time insights into user plane traffic payload and support the curation of high-fidelity data for more successful subscriber experiences.

DPI Makes User Plane Data Actionable

Communications service providers (CSPs) typically implement DPI engines in the User Plane Function (UPF), which is part of the 5G core network (5GC) responsible for user data forwarding. These engines use sophisticated detection methods to monitor traffic over unencrypted and encrypted protocols and analyze communications patterns to detect anomalies and enforce policies for enhanced security and service differentiation.

Modern DPI engines can classify thousands of applications at scale and extract metadata to enable services such as content filtering, parental controls, traffic shaping, and advanced threat detection. This technique gives CSPs comprehensive insights and enables dynamic decision-making for 5G network transactions, assuring services and guaranteeing the high performance of network slices.  But even with this capability the process remains complex and challenging, often requiring immense storage capacity. As a result, user plane data extraction is seen as cost prohibitive for CSPs.

Vital Network Intelligence for Relentless Visibility

Subscribers connect to mobile networks by way of the control plane, but all subscribers’ experiences occur on the user plane. Since the inception of the Internet of Things (IoT), new types of data such as data for devices including sensors and actuators, streaming, and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) have flooded network user planes and are driving a substantial increase in user plane traffic volume from various sources.

As subscriber demands for services increase, CSPs expect the flood of data to surge exponentially. This growth, coupled with emerging edge use cases, makes visibility into user plane intelligence vital to network operations.

Because CSPs cannot fix what they cannot see, relentless visibility is required. To derive insights from the influx of user plane data, CSPs need an “always on” intelligent DPI system that can process, classify, and store unencrypted and encrypted user plane data in real time, in motion, for analytics, regardless of the data source—subscriber, application, network, or services.

But CSPs will only realize the benefits of DPI intelligence if they consider an end-through-end network observability architecture powered by modern DPI technology with the capacity to curate data at scale, 24/7, in near-real time and produce high-fidelity curated data─what NETSCOUT calls  Smart Data.

User Plane: The Subscriber’s Experience

User plane data is critical to feeding next-generation business use cases in support of multi-edge computing (MEC), 5G network slicing, fraud detection, marketing analysis, service level agreement (SLA) management, over-the-top (OTT) management, application behavior, and network usage. CSPs need access to user plane data to really optimize the subscriber experience.

A Common Use Case: Determining Root Cause to Reduce Churn

For example, a common use case for CSPs is to maintain high-quality subscriber experience and reduce mean time to respond (MTTR) to prevent churn. Even with the highest volume of user plane data, NETSCOUT’s high-fidelity curated data allows CSPs to quickly determine root cause of subscribers’ issues, whether at the edge or core, to ensure latency and reliability. NETSCOUT’s user plane solution fosters scalable customization playbooks that give CSPs the opportunity to precisely extract only relevant data in support of tailored use cases for desired business goals. And the solution features easy-to-use dashboard-driven workflows with key metrics for gaining insights across services 24/7.

Exponential traffic growth, cloud services, and edge use cases make user plane monitoring vital to the success of next-generation networks. For a holistic network view and successful operation of 5G networks and beyond, CSPs must consider pertinent aspects of user plane data to understand the full subscriber experience, determine root cause, and drive innovation.

NETSCOUT Offers a Scalable User Plane Solution

CSPs can rely on NETSCOUT’s scalable user plane monitoring solution for real-time visibility. Powered by modern DPI technology, the solution generates high-fidelity curated data that is AI-ready to deliver comprehensive observability with insights to help CSPs securely operate their networks toward:

• Autonomous network performance and services with closed-loop orchestration, on-demand analytics, and automatic management of subscriber experience
• Achieving reliability and latency goals
• Providing opportunities for new revenue and monetization

Composed of two distinct components, NETSCOUT’s Omnis AI Insights solution provides end-through-end visibility from the RAN to the core, to the network edge. While NETSCOUT’s Omnis AI Sensor provides user plane monitoring and generates high-fidelity data from any network source, our Omnis AI Streamer platform provides powerful analytics and prioritizes on-demand filtering at source for programmable datasets for accelerated outcomes.

CSPs can depend on Omnis AI Insights to drive intelligent automation for observability. With NETSCOUT, they can future proof their networks for autonomous operations, while benefiting from AI-ready data that can unlock new value streams for tailored business insights.

Accelerate user plane monitoring with high-fidelity 
AI-ready curated data. Contact an expert today!