Telecommunications Company
Case Study
Business Summary
About the Company
Industry: Telecommunications Service Provider
Location: Minneapolis, MN
ABC Corporation maintains the highest
service quality and attracts small, local
businesses with offices of less than 20 people.
Business Challenges
Increase bandwidth to metropolitan
customers and move from traditional T-1
services to Ethernet
Metro Ethernet and VoIP Spur Monitoring
to Maintain Quality of Service
Business Challenges
ABC Corp had served the greater Minneapolis St. Paul area for more than 20 years,
successfully providing high-quality voice and data services. They had maintained
brand loyalty and this was their top priority when they decided to start offering new,
high-speed services to their customers. ABC Corp determined it was in their best
interest to begin offering Metro Ethernet services and providing voice over IP as the
replacement to traditional landline voice.
Maintain brand integrity by offering the
highest quality of service capable
To maintain and grow their market share in small and medium businesses ABC Corp
felt it was necessary to provide service level agreements to their customers. They
needed a voice monitoring solution and to provide visibility. Approval from their board
was required to purchase the equipment and this meant minimizing initial capital
spending on the project.
Provide service-level agreements to the
converted customers to prove the quality
of the offering
Monitoring Solution
Provide VoIP services over Carrier Ethernet,
replacing traditional PSTN services
Monitoring Solutions
Consolidated signaling and media voice
monitoring architecture
High-Density, Filter, and Aggregation Taps
provide Ethernet visibility
Fail-safe Optical Taps ensure high-availability
Benefits
Less monitoring equipment required
resulting in lower implementation and
maintenance costs
Filtering ensured the scalability of the
monitoring solution for the foreseeable future
High-Availability was ensured as no
SPAN/Mirror ports or intelligent devices
were placed inline
ABC Corp evaluated their options and determined that a voice monitoring solution
combined with VSS Monitoring’s Distributed Traffic Capture System™ best served
their needs. The redundant power supplies and proprietary LinkSafe™ and vAssure™
features helped ABC Corp achieve comfort with the commitment to VSS Monitoring’s
commitment to quality.
VSS Monitoring’s Distributed Traffic Capture System complemented the chosen monitoring solution in the following ways:
1.Provided the necessary inline network capture to the monitoring tool, avoiding
possible router CPU issues that can occur with traditional mirror ports.
2.Reduce the total monitoring appliances using the aggregation feature native to
the VSS Monitoring platforms chosen.
3.Provide the necessary filtering to separate RTP and signaling (H.248 and SIP)
to ensure the proper appliances received the necessary packet types.
(diagram on page 2)
Telecommunications Company Case Study; page 2
V 12.4 S.C-F-AS
V 12.4 L.C-F-AS
ERS
8600
IW SPM
V 8.8 C.C -F-AF
ERS
8600
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS
IW SPM
Signaling Analyzer
CS2K
V 12.4 S.C-F-AS
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS
Mediation Server
PVG
Signaling Analyzer
Media Analyzer
SAM 21
Figure 1 - Network Diagram for ABC Corp
Business Results
ABC Corp successfully launched their new
Metro-Ethernet and voice over IP services to the SMB
market in early 2008. They continued to grow that
business through mid-2008 at a much greater rate
than they initially expected. The migration also
allowed them to decommission old T-1s and lower
their operating costs on a per-customer basis. This
resulted in reduced costs to their end-users and,
ultimately, happier customers.
The use of the VSS Monitoring Distributed
Traffic Capture System™ enabled ABC Corp
to save over $225,000 on the initial capital
expenditure for the monitoring solution. Table 1
describes what the costs would have been without using
the VSS Distributed Traffic Capture System. The initial
capital expenditure has been amortized over 5
years. Please note that the costs also include the
existing monitoring system for the traditional
switched voice infrastructure through year three.
Year
1 2 34 5
Capital Costs
$100,000 $100,000$100,000$100,000 $100,000
Operational Costs
$217,000
Costs
$317,000 $317,000$317,000$185,000 $185,000
$217,000
$217,000
$85,000
Total Monitoring Cost for 5 Years
$85,000
$1,321,000
Table 1 - Costs for Monitoring Tools without the VSS Monitoring’s Distributed Traffic
Capture System™
Year
Capital Costs
1 2 34 (1)5
$20,000$20,000$20,000$20,000 $20,000
Operational Costs $80,500 $80,500$80,500$30,250 $30,250
Costs
$100,500 $100,500$100,500 $50,250
Total Monitoring Cost for 5 Years
$50,250
$402,000
Table 2 - Total Monitoring Cost with VSS Monitoring’s Distributed Traffic Capture System™
ABC Corp envisions eventually being able to
(1) Decommissioning of legacy switched voice monitoring system took place in Year 4
decommission their entire traditional switched
infrastructure and the monitoring architecture in
place for those circuits. The reduction in costs by eliminating unnecessary, traditional monitoring infrastructure combined with the money saved
by using VSS Monitoring equipment for tapping, aggregation, and filtering will result in an total savings of almost $1,000,000. Analysis
of the 5-year amortized cost of the solution, combined with a decommissioning of the legacy system in year 4, shows the savings realized
by using VSS Monitoring’s Distributed Traffic Capture System to be approximately 70% on a small, two-site implementation.
Telecommunications Company Case Study; page 3
Next Steps
Another provider acquired ABC Corp during the course of implementation. The acquiring company is now replicating the implementation of
voice monitoring across North America in their existing offices as they implement Metro Ethernet solutions.
Implementation Details
The initial deployment of the VSS Monitoring Distributed Traffic Capture System
provides the visibility and reliability that ABC Corp was looking for in a traffic
aggregation solution. The VSS 12x4 Aggregation Tap permitted ABC Corp to
use a consistent copper platform, even on their optical connections. In addition,
the simple aggregation used allows the monitoring system to scale intelligently
by routing a predetermined set of traffic to each of its monitoring output ports,
thus enabling new monitoring platforms to be installed as required with zero
downtime in the solution.
Product Information
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS Copper Aggregation Tap
V 12.4 S.C-F-AS Optical to Copper Aggregation Tap
V 8.8 C.C - F -AF Distributed Filter Tap
The filtering capabilities in the 8x8 Filter tap gave ABC Corp the capability to separate the RTP traffic to a monitoring device that was
hardware accelerated to handle the large numbers of packets that the monitoring system must acccept while simultaneously providing only
the signaling traffic to non-hardware accelerated platforms at a third of a cost of the hardware accelerated counterparts.
The VSS Distributed Traffic Capture System was implemented in such a way that each of the monitor output ports was sent to an aggregation
12x4 and, ultimately, output to the monitoring tool. This stacking approach is quite common and allows the VSS architecture to scale well
beyond the physical port limitations of any single platform.
V 12.4 S.C-F-AS
V 12.4 L.C-F-AS
V 8.8 C.C -F-AF
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS
Signaling Analyzer
V 12.4 S.C-F-AS
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS
Mediation Server
Signaling Analyzer
Media Analyzer
Figure 2 - Monitoring Implementation for ABC Corp
Telecommunications Company Case Study; page 4
Alternate Considered
ABC Corporation also considered an alternate deployment using 8x8 filter taps at the capture layer, where the filtered traffic would then be
forwarded to a 12x4 aggregator. Ultimately, it was determined that the network’s utilization was sufficiently low to allow for filtering at the
central layer. If the network was operating at a higher utilization, ABC corporation would be required to go with this alternate scenario.
V 8.8 C.C-F-AF
V 8.8 C.C-F-AF
V 12.4 C.C-F-AS
V 8.8 C.C-F-AF
Signaling Analyzer
V 8.8 C.C-F-AF
V 8.8 C.C-F-AF
Mediation Server
Signaling Analyzer
Media Analyzer
Figure 3 - Alternate Scenario Considered
For More Information
To find out more about the V 12x4 or the V 8.8 Distributed Taps, please visit our website at: http://www.vssmonitoring.com
For more information please contact us at info@vssmonitoring.com
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