End-to-end network service monitoring

One simple truth of virtualized networks is, it’s no longer possible to infer service quality by monitoring network quality. Because the traditional 1:1 mapping of service topology to network topology has been broken, you can no longer tell if a service is working by simply looking at network key performance indicators.

Why is this a problem? Well, in traditional networks, most services – likely any service not covered by an SLA – were not explicitly monitored. The assumption was that if there were no network alarms and the customer wasn’t complaining, then everything must be ok. In the virtualized network, this is no longer the case. Silent failures of service chains or cloud-based services may not show up in any kind of network alarm, nor is it easy to associate network alarms with a virtual service.

By orchestrating service assurance into most, if not all, service chains, service providers can have 100% visibility of every service and at very little additional coast. This visibility will be essential to supporting proactive QoE management and zero-touch operations.