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How to Minimize the Mean Time to Repair for an Optimized Quality of Experience


The move to IP backhaul has drastically changed how operations-support-systems (OSS) engineering teams resolve service degradation. Although IP provides more flexibility in the backhaul, there is no longer a dedicated path to find and resolve encountered problems. Packets might use different routes. Degradations in IP traffic can happen through jitter, packet loss, or delay. All of this can have a direct impact on user experience.

OSS engineering teams are obligated to find new ways to ensure quality, reliability, sustainability, and agility for network operations. At the same time, however, it is crucial to maintain the expected customer experience.

Thus, the question becomes how to ensure the best service quality and, in case of service degradation or failure, a fast service recovery for customers.

The possible solutions must take into account important parameters: the required investment, the operability of the selected solution, low follow-up costs, the fit for the future, and easy integration into the existing OSS ecosystems. The goal is not only to guarantee IP backhaul performance, but most of all to minimize the mean time to detection and mean time to repair for an optimized quality of experience (QoE).

Search for New Methods to Ensure Premium Customer Experience

Several concepts were analyzed and tested. However, they were either too costly to deploy and operate, or they represented a large investment and entailed high running costs in coming years. Therefore, the search has continued. From further consultations with the industry and standard bodies, a function that is an exact fit with the demands and needs was found: TWAMP, which stands for two-way active measurement protocol. This industry standard was introduced by Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) with EXFO participating in the development.

To read more about the TWAMP standard and find out why the customer selected EXFO for their ability to overcome the mentioned challenges, download our latest customer success story: Using TWAMP for 100% View of IP Traffic.