Intel and Exfo unveil 5G fault detection tool

A new solution launched by Canadian telecoms testing company Exfo and US chip giant Intel promises operators the ability to monitor a 5G network in real time and more swiftly fix problems.

Going under the catchy title ‘Exfo’s full-stack assurance solution,’ the new service is pitched as a tool to enable 5G network operators to ‘identify and correlate service degradation issues’ and it supports ‘automation for cloud specific assurance regardless of whether faults originate in the network, service layers, or in the cloud-native network infrastructure,’ we are told.

The offering uses something called ‘platform observability’ by Intel alongside Exfo’s adaptive service assurance (ASA) platform in order to ‘close the visibility gap among cloud-native infrastructure and the network and service layers’ – which translated into English would appear to mean it provides visibility of a network which allows operators to spot problems. This can apparently speed up the process of resolving faults and and eliminate ‘domain-specific fault denial.’

To try and boil it down further, the product would appear to pool together system, monitoring, and telemetry data feeds, monitor them in real-time, and allow swift action if anything is amiss.

“Network virtualization is an evolutionary path that began in 4G and is now firmly established in 5G,” said Philippe Morin, EXFO’s CEO. “But managing service level agreements across virtual and physical domains is significantly more challenging, especially when the infrastructure is not always owned by the operator. As part of our adaptive service assurance platform, EXFO’s full-stack assurance solution ensures that operators can detect, correlate and resolve faults wherever they originate, significantly reducing time to resolution.”

Alex Quach, GM of Intel’s Wireline & Core Network Division added: “While service assurance in mobile networks is relatively well understood, the added dimension of cloud-native infrastructure provides a new challenge for most operators. Given the ubiquitous adoption of solutions fuelled by Intel Xeon processors in the core network, Intel Platform Telemetry Insights with Open Telemetry and EXFO’s ASA platform provides the lens operators need to help deliver full service assurance across their network infrastructure.”

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