Stop Running 5G Blind

Modern 5G cores run as cloud-native software on commercial servers. Critical traffic often moves laterally between network functions without reaching a traditional probe, creating a visibility blind spot. Earlier 4G architectures relied on physical cables and hardware taps; cloud-native 5G requires a different approach to capturing that traffic.

For communications service providers (CSPs), virtual tapping, or vTapping, mirrors network traffic so it can be monitored in a cloud environment. But capturing traffic is only the first step: The resulting feeds must also be usable by monitoring and assurance tools.

The Challenge

Network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) provide vTap solutions to mirror network traffic and restore visibility. However, each vendor’s implementation has proprietary requirements: Output formats, transport protocols, or metadata encapsulation can differ. As a result, mirrored traffic from different vendors can arrive in incompatible feeds.

CSPs operating multivendor 5G standalone (SA) cores need to accommodate different NEM vTap implementations. The gap described here concerns a common approach to those vTap implementations, not 5G standards overall. Without that consistency, CSPs must stitch together incompatible feeds to restore visibility. They need a way to turn that patchwork into consistent packet data their assurance tools can use.

Omnis 5G Packet Converter

Turning fragmented feeds into usable packet data is exactly what NETSCOUT Omnis 5G Packet Converter is built to do. It converts single or multiple NEM vTap feeds into standard packet data for monitoring and assurance. Omnis 5G Packet Converter:

• Detunnels, reassembles, and reorders the inner packets carried in those feeds
• Creates synthetic packets when needed
• Filters and exports the packet data to NETSCOUT InfiniStream and vStream probes and clusters

NETSCOUT Omnis 5G Packet Converter supports vTap feeds from a wide and growing roster of the industry’s leading NEMs and is available in both a virtual form factor and a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware appliance.

From Fragmented Feeds to Actionable Intelligence

The converter prepares packet data for NETSCOUT probes and clusters; Adaptive Service Intelligence (ASI) then turns those packets into NETSCOUT Smart Data for assurance, analytics, and AI-driven operations. These are distinct steps: First make the feeds usable; then derive contextual intelligence from the packet data.

Accelerating Packet Intelligence

Deployment flexibility supports this packet-intelligence foundation: Because Omni 5G Packet Converter is available in both a virtual form factor and a COTS hardware appliance, CSPs can choose among options that align with their cloud and data center strategies. These options build on NETSCOUT’s innovative work in cloud-native 5G standalone visibility.

As 5G deployments expand, emerging use cases such as network slicing and agentic AI workloads make a dependable packet-data foundation increasingly important. That foundation supports the monitoring and assurance needed to assess whether services meet their latency requirements.

NETSCOUT’s patented ASI technology turns the acquired packets into Smart Data: highly curated, wire-sourced intelligence for assurance, analytics, and AI-driven operations. It correlates transactions across the control plane, which carries network signaling, and the user plane, which carries user traffic. That correlation preserves transaction fidelity and adds context to the packet intelligence.

Usable packet data is one requirement; confidence in the vendor interfaces supplying it is another. The NEM vTap Certification Program addresses that second requirement.

NEM vTap Certification Program

NETSCOUT’s vTap Certification Program offers a formal framework for independently validating multivendor vTap interfaces.

The framework is positioned as an industry first and is built around Omnis 5G Packet Converter, already deployed in production networks. Rather than relying on opaque, bilateral vTap integrations, the program establishes a transparent, market-visible certification benchmark.

For NEMs, the vTap Certification Program provides a documented compliance target and a way to differentiate their implementations. For CSPs, the benefit is confidence in packet fidelity via independent validation—a foundation their assurance, analytics, and AI platforms depend on.

Learn how these complementary capabilities support consistent, trusted visibility for contextual assurance, analytics, and AI-driven operations.

Explore how Omnis 5G Packet Converter makes fragmented vTap feeds usable, and how the NEM vTap Certification Program helps validate the interfaces behind them.