High speed, high reliability and low latency are the key benefits that CSPs expect from 5G. While high speed (targeted at 20 Gbps) helps to upload and download video-based content faster and in larger volumes, high reliability (always 100%) supports mission-critical services especially in the IoT world.
Below is the Part 2 of the article by Sandeep Raina, Product Marketing director, MYCOM OSI. For the 1st part of the article click here.
Role of SQM in managing the slices
By virtue of its design, SQM incorporates the capability of managing a service and orchestrating changes based on QoS policies/SLAs. This is critical to the constant negotiation of the network slice to support the service supported. In certain cases, a new network slice would need to be configured on the fly.
In such a high-demand dynamic service environment of 5G, an SQM especially designed for digital/IoT services will enable the CSPs to provide the following:
- Service monitoring – IoT networks are currently being overlaid on existing communication networks (and soon 5G) and therefore require CSPs to manage service degradations, root cause analysis and resolution to be carried out constantly. An SQM can help with
- IoT services managed as per industry vertical
- Network/slice analytics and associated service analytics
- Network/slice capacity and congestion KPIs
- Service monitoring – IoT networks are currently being overlaid on existing communication networks (and soon 5G) and therefore require CSPs to manage service degradations, root cause analysis and resolution to be carried out constantly. An SQM can help with
- Real-time network/slice KPIs – As IoT data traverses 5G networks, it needs to be monitored in real-time (down to a few ms of delay). Some key network/slice KPIs would be capacity, latency, jitter, throughput and bandwidth allocation. As latency can range from 1-10 ms for different IoT services, jitter from 10-100 microseconds, bandwidth from 100 Kbps (small sensored devices) to several hundred Mbps (robotic cameras), varying levels of these metrics per slice means constant manoeuvring for scaling-in, scaling out of slice resources
- Assuring reliability – The acceptable level of service assurance for most time-critical services is 100% and many operator processes need proactive SQM with closed-loop automation to reduce delays and increase network reliability
- Predictive maintenance – In order to protect the IoT service uptime, digital SQM offers predictive and pre-emptive maintenance for services prone to failure. For example, 5G network slices can carry out dynamic route optimisation especially for services that are mobile (cars, drones, etc.). In order to predict problems accurately and then follow up with pre-emptive maintenance, use of analytics-led SQM will be key
- Analysis and resolution – Root cause analysis for identification of service issues and use of dynamic orchestration to resolve issues to improve the latency, jitter, bandwidth and other critical characteristics of the network slice, including clearing of alarms
- Service dashboards – For end-to-end monitoring for each industry vertical and for each end user, the 5G CSP can provide aggregated service performance dashboards and visualisation/drill-down to individual network slices
Sandeep Raina
- Service dashboards – For end-to-end monitoring for each industry vertical and for each end user, the 5G CSP can provide aggregated service performance dashboards and visualisation/drill-down to individual network slices
The IoT service providers and the 5G CSPs understand that life-critical and time-critical IoT services are highly dependent on the success of the 5G network slicing concept. It will require renewed effort on the 5G operator’s part to analyse and action performance data quickly through use of predictive models and automated root cause analysis to extract the most from the 5G slices.
The 5G CSPs’ promise to the IoT service provider will be a reality not only when the CSPs slice their networks and tie them to IoT services, but also when they introduce new techniques of listening and reacting to the network slice and the associated service, using automation, orchestration and policy-driven Service Quality Management.
The author of this blog is Sandeep Raina, Product Marketing director, MYCOM OSI
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