Why 5G changes the approach to service assurance
Many 5G standalone deployments have turned into non-standalone due to the technological challenges that 5G brings to the table. Two fundamental changes are virtualization and disaggregation – taking infrastructure that used to be tightly pre-integrated and reside within a self-contained, self-managed datacenter and now disaggregating and virtualizing that infrastructure and distributing it out to the edge. How does this affect service assurance? It negates the ability of passive probing to effectively visualize the full network and leaves gaps that can only be filled with active monitoring through virtualized agents located throughout the infrastructure. In this MWC 2023 interview, Doug Roberts, GM of the Lifecycle Service Assurance business for Spirent Communications, explains how active testing revolutionizes service assurance, how the addition of ML/AI models helps understand and evaluate KPI thresholds specific to the targeted network, and how Spirent solutions enable service providers to feel confident in their network’s performance.
