Sandvine Announces Four Key Enhancements to Application and Network Intelligence

Waterloo, ON May 17, 2022 – On the heels of its recent news about joining the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program, Sandvine is announcing four key enhancements to its Application and Network Intelligence (ANI) portfolio at the Big 5G Event in Austin, TX. Paving the way to innovation and monetization in 4G, 5G NR, and 5G Standalone are Sandvine cloud native deployments, Gaming QoE “MOS Scoring” and Classification, 5G-Policy integration, and a new NWDAF use case:

• Cloud Native Deployment for ActiveLogic Hyperscale Data Plane – Through CNCF-compliant Kubernetes-orchestrated containers and open-source components, ActiveLogic's availability as a cloud native function (CNF) accelerates application rollouts and high-impact changes. The CNF helps engineers automate delivery and rapidly fix broken builds by using DevOps best practices.

Lyndon Cantor, CEO, Sandvine said: “By first-half 2022, our entire portfolio will be available as cloud native functions, ensuring Sandvine customers get the most out of their 5G cloud deployments in terms of rapid service creation, high performance, and the flexibility to rapidly create apps and services – even across complex, multivendor environments. The horizontal scale and efficiency of cloud native will help them lower costs of innovation, as well as generate new revenue streams around network performance and Application QoE.”

• Gaming QoE by Type (cloud, download, online/interactive) – Improve end-user experience visibility by detecting and measuring user actions and behavioral characteristics of individual games. Sandvine’s best-in-class analytics and traffic classification are enablers for real-time QoE “scoring” of performance KPIs calculated per user, per application, per location, and per device. These QoE scores indicate lag, time jumps, slow loading, failed downloads, and buffering video. Additionally, Sandvine’s signature library is made up of more than 20% of gaming signatures. The close monitoring of gaming traffic, including 4K quality gaming traffic, helps planners manage congestion and keep pace with changes in gaming app algorithms, codecs, and protocols.

Don Alusha, senior analyst in ABI Research’s telco digitization practice, said: “Gamers are very tech-savvy, so to meet their demands, operators have to dynamically tune the network to ensure gamers get the QoE they want. Every single gaming session is a chance to measure and monitor network experience – to truly measure gaming QoE from the viewer’s perspective. This means operators are in a position to make an informed decision and choose the best actions to improve QoE, minimize churn risk, and increase upsell opportunities.”

• 5G Integration with Policy Control Function (PCF) – To help operators easily create and seamlessly deploy policies in 4G and 5G networks, Sandvine has built an interface between its solution and customer PCFs to support use cases for Network Optimization and Revenue Generation. This new interface enables 5G operators to implement an Application Detection Function (ADC) in 5G SA networks for more innovative application-based policies and more precise control over network resources. By combining ANI with the PCF, operators can better govern subscriber services (data allocation, radio access type, subscriber services) to create more service options and a better QoE for subscribers.

• New Use Case for “Observed Service Experience” – A new analytics service features sophisticated QoE scoring capabilities within Sandvine’s enriched NWDAF. This new service is included within 5G Service Intelligence Engine and delivers the performance required for more complex 5G network slices. Acting as a single or additional source of metrics and KPIs, ANI becomes a trusted application function (AF) for policy and charging, per 3GPP’s definition of a “centralized, predictive analytics platform for 5G core networks.” The use case delivers to the NWDAF a mean opinion score (MOS) that reflects App QoE on a per user equipment, per-UE group, or network slice basis. The NWDAF then converts the MOS metrics about service experience into insight and predictions that help operators assure network and service performance, on top of which they can generate additional QoS-based revenues.

To learn more about how Application and Network Intelligence in 5G deployments will help assure throughput and latency for superior subscriber QoE, schedule a meeting with us at Big 5G or contact us here.

Be sure to check out our 2022 Global Internet Phenomena Report and on-demand Webinar.

Other Resources:
Sandvine Google Cloud Partner Press Release
Sandvine’s 5G Portfolio
Sandvine Use Case eBook
A 5G Perspective: Leverage the Power of Application Intelligence
IDC Spotlight: Application and Network Intelligence is Critical for 5G Success
Sandvine’s 2022 Global Internet Phenomena Report
Cloud Ready Options
5G Service Intelligence Engine (NWDAF) Whitepaper 
5G Service Innovation and Intelligence Whitepaper

About Sandvine
Sandvine's cloud-based Application and Network Intelligence portfolio helps customers deliver high quality, optimized experiences to consumers and enterprises. Customers use our solutions to analyze, optimize, and monetize application experiences, using contextual machine learning-based insights and real-time actions. Market-leading classification of more than 95% of traffic across mobile and fixed networks by user, application, device, and location creates uniquely rich, real-time data that significantly enhances interactions between users and applications and drives revenues. For more, visit http://www.sandvine.com or follow Sandvine on Twitter @Sandvine.

Media Contact:
Susana Schwartz
Sandvine
sschwartz@sandvine.com

SOURCE Sandvine