EXFO

Dynamic topology and predictive

In collaboration
analytics in virtualized networks
A conversation with Anssi Tauriainen, Director of Service
Assurance and Analytics, EXFO

By Monica Paolini, Senza Fili


Profile
EXFO
EXFO specializes in portable optical and high-
speed transport test solutions, network and
service assurance and analytics solutions. It
serves over 200 wireless and wireline network
operators, service providers, webscale
companies and network equipment
manufacturers in more than 100 countries.
EXFOs portfolio covers virtual and non-virtual
networks end to end, and enables operators to
go beyond initial testing with real-time
assurance, monitoring and analytics
functionality. The companys standard for its
products is that they be easy to use, automated,
and linked to analytics capabilities.
Topology analytics
Network performance analytics
IP network and transport analytics
Data and voice analytics
Fiber analytics
Video analytics
NFV closed-loop analytics
Field-test analytics
These applications are directed to service
operations, network engineering, planning and
customer care. The Xtract dashboard includes
KPIs and other data from probe performance,
network equipment, CRM and inventory data.
The acquisition of Ontology in March 2017
expanded the functionality of the EXFO real-
time analytics platform by adding a dynamic
topology that enables the correlation of data
across multiple sources, the coverage of more
use cases, and real-time analysis in legacy, NFV
and hybrid networks.
By combining multiple data sources, EXFO
Ontology brings fragmented views of the
network together. It creates a dynamic network
model that Xtract uses to analyze the data and
generate actionable recommendations in real
time.
EXFO Worx is a service assurance and
performance management solution that allows
for end-to-end service testing and monitoring in
real time and for historical reporting, and that
can leverage Ontologys network model.
Operators can use EXFO Worx test points to
monitor and troubleshoot voice, video and data
IP services.

EXFOs 3D analytics platform is designed for

real-time correlation of network monitoring and
management data, such as performance, fault,
test and CDR data. The correlation of these data
sources enables operators to do real-time
monitoring and impact analysis, automated
root-cause analysis, and troubleshooting across
three distinct but correlated areas:

Subscriber
Service
Network

As the central element in EXFOs 3D analytics

platform, Xtract relies on modeling, service
experience indexing and machine learning to
support applications such as:

2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks |2|

EXFO
Dynamic topology
and predictive
analytics in
virtualized networks
A conversation with Anssi
Tauriainen, Director of Service
Assurance and Analytics, EXFO
In this conversation with Anssi Tauriainen, the
Director of Service Assurance and Analytics at
EXFO, we talked about how analytics can help
us optimize mobile networks today. Through
analytics, a network operator can pull together
multiple data sources to create a dynamic
topology of the network and react to location-
specific conditions in order to optimize the
network in real time. Increasing demand puts a
lot of strain on operators, and analytics is the
perfect tool to help them get the most out of
their networks.
Monica Paolini: Among EXFO solutions and
services, analytics plays a prominent role. Can
you tell us what your focus on analytics is at
EXFO?
Anssi Tauriainen: Analytics is a big topic for us,
and a very important strategic project. EXFO has
been in the industry for 30 years, so quite a
2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com
while now. The company is probably better
known, still, for test and measurement
solutions. The background of the company is in
fiber optics, where we started 30 years ago.
Now, over the past 10 years, we have been
expanding the solution offering more into
service assurance, so in addition to test
measurement equipment, we also have fiber
network monitoring solutions. We have active
and passive probing solutions for different
layers of the network.
Were using the analytics solution to combine
and correlate all of that data that were
collecting today from the operators network.
We use analytics for two purposes. The first is
consolidating the data and correlating it
between the domains. The second, and more
important, purpose is making sense of the data,
using different mechanisms to process that
massive amount of data and reach conclusions.
Monica: What motivated you to work more on
analytics?
Anssi: Obviously, there are major, big
transformations going on in the telecoms
industry. Were seeing the number of
connected devices increasing all the time. We
see IoT coming. We see cars and new devices
being connected to the network. We see
networks being modernized, for example, with
fiber to the home, fiber to the antenna, and
projects ongoing to increase the capacity of the
networks.
5G rollouts are already in a starting phase, and
one of the biggest areas is Network Functions
EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks
Virtualization, or NFV, where the existing
architecture based on legacy hardware is being
modernized and moved into the cloud to
become virtualized software.
Our customers are planning this transition right
now, and we get a lot of requests and inquiries,
especially on how analytics can be applied in a
hybrid environment and in virtualized networks,
and how analytics can support all of these
transitions in understanding the increasing
complexity of the network and of the
infrastructure.
Monica: Theres a lot of legacy, so there is a lot
of complexity that operators have to deal with
in their networks. The traditional approach of
optimizing the performance of each element is
no longer sufficient, and you need to look at the
end-to-end performance of the network.
You have been pioneering this approach for
quite some time. Can you tell us a little about
why we need end-to-end? And what does end-
to-end mean to EXFO?
Anssi: Youre absolutely right: we have been
pioneering this approach. Weve been collecting
requirements and implementing a real-time
solution.
The challenge today is that there are a number
of OSS systems for network management, or
element management systems for various types
of networks.
In telecoms, when the rollout started, there was
only a single network technology, mainly GSM,
and since then, layers and layers of new
technology have been implemented on top of
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that. Basically, every time new
technology gets implemented, a new
OSS or a new management system is
implemented, as well, for that
particular technology.

As a result, the network operations or

nowadays, the service operations are
fragmented. It is not uncommon to see
that, for example, network engineering
people or technicians have to access
tens of different systems in order to
understand or troubleshoot problems
in the network.

Were trying to simplify this by having a

single system combining the data end
to end, so not focusing only on a certain
part of the network for example, the
radio network, or the core network, or
transmission, or the optical network.
Instead, we are building a solution that
is able to combine all of it together.

Let me give you a simple example. When youre
troubleshooting what goes on with a Voice over
LTE, or VoLTE, call, EXFOs solution gives you a
system that contains the performance data of
individual networks for that particular call in a
single system.
That saves time for manual troubleshooting, of
course, because not only can you see a single
call in a single system, but that also gives a basis
to apply more automated mechanisms for
troubleshooting and discovering the failures.
Monica: Horizontally, you have a solution that
works across different technologies, so it could
be GSM for 4G, and eventually 5G. And then, on
a vertical level, all the way from the core to the
RAN. Is there a unique point where the
operator can optimize the whole network?
Anssi: Absolutely, and there is even one more
dimension to it. If you think about the network
as layers of different network technologies if
you think of the traditional OSI model there
are seven layers on top of each other. In order
for a troubleshooter to understand how the
network is performing, you need to understand
the performance on different layers, because
they are connected to each other.
If we take the previous example: in order to
understand why the service in a Voice over LTE
call is degraded, it is extremely useful to have
the ability to drill down to lower layers of the
network for example, to layer 3, analyzing
how the IP network is performing.
For example, you can connect this information
to a certain path in the network where the
network latency is increasing. Once you connect
this information back to the subscribers, you
understand that this is the reason the service is
degrading.
There is also another example. You can go even
to layer 1 to analyze the performance of the
fiber network and understand that there is, for
example, an increase in the loss on a certain

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part of the fiber network, which is whats
causing the increased packet loss or latency in a
certain part of the IP network.
This is what we mean by end to end: you cant
actually just analyze the data from a single layer
and expect to troubleshoot it, either manually
or with an automated mechanism, without
actually having the visibility across all of the
layers.
Monica: You see that either something needs to
be optimized or its not working properly, and
then you can dig down into whichever
dimension is most appropriate, right?
Anssi: Absolutely. And using the single system,
not having to jump from one system to another.
Monica: And we could add another dimension:
the application. If you have, say, VoLTE, video
and best-effort data, you can do the same
analysis for each application, so that an
operator could say, Well, best-effort data
works perfectly fine, yet we have a problem
with video, or with conversational video.
It helps them to look not just at the overall
network performance, but at the performance
of different services or applications, right?
Anssi: Absolutely. The end users, whether those
are business users or consumer subscribers,
they dont think about a difference between the
services. For them, its the one provider
providing everything. They expect all of them to
work flawlessly at the same time.
Monica: For an operator, the goal is to optimize
quality of experience rather than making sure
2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com
each element in the network is working
correctly, independently from the rest. To get a
good grasp of the QoE, you need this high-level
view of whats going on and how to optimize all
the applications. You cannot just optimize one
application and hope for the rest to work well.
Anssi: No, not really. I think that was kind of the
idea with the network management systems
and OSSs earlier, but if you manage individual
elements and therefore the situation is good
enough, and the performance is good enough,
then everything else on top of this is working
well enough. That was the principal approach
back in the day.
Nowadays, that has shifted. A major shift from
network-oriented service operations into user-
oriented service operations has taken place,
and youre absolutely right: the focus is actually
on the quality of experience for individual
services, and how QoE is impacting services.
EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks
What is the impact on end users, for either
consumer or business subscribers?
Right now, a certain number of services are
being used, but the expectation is that there
will be a larger number of services in the future,
on the operator-side model, where operators
are able to create new services in a very agile
mode.
That, of course, poses another big challenge to
analytic systems. The analytic systems have to
be agile to support new services.
Monica: IoT is among the new services. How is
that going to affect analytics?
Anssi: Obviously, when youre analyzing this for
end users and Im now talking about human
end users theres always the human behavior,
which is more difficult to model. You need to
have several data points in order to model and
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understand the experience satisfaction level of
your customers.
In IoT, thats of course going to change, because
machines dont have any opinion on service
quality; its strictly based on KPIs. In a sense, its
going to make it a bit easier, because you can
make analyses purely on hard facts. But, of
course, the problems are going to be
substantial.
There will be two sets of issues. First, theres a
large amount of data to be processed. And the
second thing is the need for real-time analytics.
Technologies such as streaming analytics need
to be put into use in order to react to different
phenomena in the network.
Monica: You mentioned real time. Thats a big
change. We used to optimize the network
based on historical data, and thats no longer
sufficient. Its still important, but not sufficient.
We need to move to real time, but operators
are a bit worried because, by definition, with
real-time analytics, changes in the network
happen faster. You may feel like youre losing
control, and you want to make sure you have it
right.
Anssi: Real time is an important aspect, and
right now, most analytic solutions are mostly in
reactive mode. When something happens in the
network, it needs to be discovered fast, and the
correction needs to be implemented fast.
Two important drivers, or two important KPIs to
measure this are mean time to discover, or
MTTD, and mean time to repair, or MTTR.
Basically, understanding whats going on with
2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com
the network and understanding how to fix it are
two key drivers, and of course, the faster and
easier the discovery, troubleshooting, and fixing
are, the greater the benefit the analytic solution
brings.
This discovery can be manual, or our goal
the root-cause analysis can be fully automated,
and then it can be done much, much faster than
with the traditional manual methods.
In that sense, the real-time aspect is very
important, because you want to locate and fix
the issue immediately. Once you have the
capability to do automated troubleshooting,
you can do it as soon as something happens in
the network.
In the future, one of the big changes in the
industry and in analytics will be the usage of
artificial intelligence. Therere a number of
success cases, already, in other industries on
how artificial intelligence or machine learning is
being utilized to solve complex problems.
Watson is a good example. IBM is publishing a
number of use cases they managed to sort out
by using Watson.
That same new technology can be applied and
is being applied in telecoms, as well. What
today is reactive and based very much on
discovering in real time, is going to be even
further automated, so moving from real-time
into predictive and finally into cognitive
analytics.
Predictive and self-learning analytics methods
can actually tell you whats going to happen
next instead of, and in addition to, telling you
whats happening right now and how to fix it.
EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks
Monica: Thats the real target. You want to
prevent a problem from arising in the first
place. How important do you think tools like
artificial intelligence and machine learning are
going to be in this context?
Anssi: Of course, its never going to be fully
automated, and its never going to be fully
predictive. There are certain things you simply
cant predict, regardless of how advanced your
algorithms are.
If you look at the operational costs today how
much money operators are spending in
operating the network, and how much of that
work is based on manual analysis and
knowledge that is residing in the skilled
engineers head thats a very, very big
number.
One of the main mechanisms to reduce these
operational costs is the introduction of artificial
intelligence and self-learning, or machine
learning, in this domain.
Monica: Can you tell us a bit about the
acquisition of Ontology? That has brought new
analytics skills into EXFO.
Anssi: Ontology Systems developed technology
that enables it to build the dynamic topology of
the network. Through the acquisition, today
EXFO has a solution that connects different data
sources on the network for example,
inventory data, event data, and billing customer
information.
This connected data can be unstructured data,
and can be processed. A dynamic topology
model of the network can be created out of this
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 complementing the inventory systems of
today. Even in physical networks, the inventory
systems are very laborious and expensive to
keep up to date, and often, as a result, they are
mostly out of date.
But the dynamic discovery of the topology
enables us to have an up-to-date, real-time
topological map of the network, which is a great
basis for applying further analytics. And the
topology itself can be used for understanding
the service impact, or it can be used for
troubleshooting, for example.
When we are connecting this into various
probing solutions or monitoring solutions that
export to our analytics solution and other parts
of our portfolio, we can build more advanced
solutions.
Ontology is a key piece in automating the root-
cause analysis for different kinds of networks.
Monica: This helps operators deal with the
amount of data they typically have. An operator
has all the data it needs from its network. The
question is how to organize that knowledge,
and how to find whats relevant and whats not
relevant. Most of the information is not
relevant and not needed, but you need that
small amount that is relevant to find problems
and to address them.
Anssi: Thats right. You have to remember that
this is the situation even today, when most of
the networks are physical, based on physical
hardware. A virtual environment in which all
the functions are running in the cloud is going
to be more dynamic. This will probably take 10
or even 20 years. In the meantime, we still have
2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com
hybrid networks which are partially based on
dedicated hardware and partially cloud based.
Having up-to-date information on the
configuration and topology of the network will
be essential in understanding how the network
performs and how it can be optimized.
Monica: This is especially the case as you have
virtualized networks and, even more so, when
you have a network thats partly virtualized and
partly not. Thats yet another big challenge.
How does the transition to virtualization bear
on analytics? There is more variability, a more
dynamic use of the network. At the same time,
its also an opportunity, because virtualization
gives you more flexibility in optimizing the
network.
Anssi: Absolutely. There are new analytics use
cases that are applicable and important for
virtual networks. The lowest-hanging fruit is to
understand how, for example, the software-
defined network performs how the NFVI, the
platform for virtualized functions, performs
and combine and understand these, and
connect the results to the customer experience.
Its about how to optimize the performance of
the virtualized platform itself, and how to
combine the statistics from the software-
defined network to understand and create a
better customer experience or service
experience.
Moving forward, its going to get more complex
when, like you mentioned, there is a capability
to automatically tune and optimize the
EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks
performance of the network. The orchestrator
is the key component in doing this.
In order for the orchestrator to optimize the
network in the best possible way, its going to
need brains. Thats not something which is built
inside of the orchestrator today.
There is also a need for a closed-loop analytics
capability: a component that collects the
performance indicators of various sources in
the networks, understands the performance
level of individual NFVs, and then feeds this
information back to the orchestrator which
can then act based on this information.
The orchestrator is capable of managing and
configuring the network on the fly, changing the
network configuration and capacity based on
the performance and experience of the services
provided.
Before going into that, there is a simpler need
for analytics, and thats basically managing the
hybrid networks. A combination of virtualized
networks and physical hardware.
In that kind of network, the key use case is
understanding how the new virtual components
perform and combine that information with
service experience data, basically to understand
how to optimize the cloud service in connection
to hardware components, in order to improve
the overall experience to end users.
Moving into a fully virtualized environment,
there is a use case, called closed-up analytics,
where the idea is that theres a component that
is feeding the information to the orchestrator.
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That component is analytics. Thats the brain of LTE Long Term Evolution
the NFV. MTTD Mean time to discover
Glossary MTTR Mean time to repair
Understanding the performance of the network
and understanding the performance of closed- 4G Fourth generation NFV Network Functions Virtualization
loop functions, and then creating 5G Fifth generation NFVI NFV infrastructure
recommendations based on that, and then AI Artificial intelligence OSI Open Systems Interconnection
feeding that information to the orchestrator so CCA Common cause analysis OSS Operations support system
it can go ahead and execute these CRM Customer relationship QoE Quality of experience
recommendations. management RAN Radio access network
GSM Global System for Mobile RTI Real-time inventory
This is probably a few years away, because Communications RT-SIA Real-time service impact analysis
there is no such thing as a fully virtualized IoT Internet of things SA Service assurance
environment today. But I think thats a very IP Internet Protocol VoLTE Voice over LTE
clear development direction that we see in the KPI Key performance indicator
market today already.

2017 Senza Fili www.senzafiliconsulting.com EXFO: Dynamic topology and predictive analytics in virtualized networks |8|
About EXFO
EXFO develops smarter network test, monitoring and analytics solutions for the worlds leading communications service
providers, network equipment manufacturers and webscale companies. Since 1985, weve worked side by side with our
customers in the lab, field, data center, boardroom and beyond to pioneer essential technology and methods for each phase
of the network lifecycle. Our portfolio of test orchestration and real-time 3D analytics solutions turn complex into simple and
deliver business-critical insights from the network, service and subscriber dimensions. Most importantly, we help our
customers flourish in a rapidly transforming industry where good enough testing, monitoring and analytics just arent good
enough anymorethey never were for us, anyway. For more information, visit EXFO.com and follow us on the EXFO Blog.

About Anssi Tauriainen

Anssi Taurianen, Director of Service Assurance and Analytics at EXFO, brings over 20 years of experience in the
telecommunication industry. Prior to joining EXFO through the acquisition of his former company, Anssi was the Founder and
CEO of Aito Technologies, a leading provider of customer experience analytics for mobile network operators (MNOs). Previous
experience also includes multiple positions at Nokia Networks, including Head of Business Management, Project Manager,
R&D Engineer and SW Engineer. He holds a Masters Degree in Computing science, mathematics and telecommunications
from University of Jyvskyl and is currently conducting a PhD in research in Communication technology in Helsinki University
of Technology.

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About Senza Fili

Senza Fili provides advisory support on wireless technologies and services. At Senza Fili we have in-depth
expertise in financial modeling, market forecasts and research, white paper and report preparation,
business plan support, strategic advice, and due diligence. Our client base is international and spans the
entire value chain: clients include vendors, system integrators, investors, regulators, and industry
associations. We provide a bridge between technologies and services, helping our clients assess
established and emerging technologies, leverage these technologies to support new or existing services,
and build solid, profitable business models. Independent advice, a strong quantitative orientation, and an
international perspective are the hallmarks of our work. For additional information, visit
www.senzafiliconsulting.com or contact us at info@senzafiliconsulting.com or +1 425 657 4991.

About the interviewer

Monica Paolini, PhD, is the founder and president of Senza Fili. She is an expert in wireless technologies
and has helped clients worldwide to understand new technologies and customer requirements, create and
assess financial TCO and ROI models, evaluate business plan opportunities, market their services and
products, and estimate the market size and revenue opportunity of new and established wireless
technologies. She frequently gives presentations at conferences, and writes reports, blog entries and
articles on wireless technologies and services, covering end-to-end mobile networks, the operator,
enterprise and IoT markets. She has a PhD in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego
(US), an MBA from the University of Oxford (UK), and a BA/MA in philosophy from the University of
Bologna (Italy). You can reach her at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.

2017 Senza Fili Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved. This paper was prepared on behalf of EXFO. The transcription of the conversation has been edited for consistency and readability. The document can be
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permission from Senza Fili Consulting. While the document is based upon information that we consider accurate and reliable, Senza Fili Consulting makes no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the
information in this document. Senza Fili Consulting assumes no liability for any damage or loss arising from reliance on this information. Trademarks mentioned in this document are property of their respective
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