ipoque launches R&S Net Sensor, its first product under the Rohde & Schwarz brand
July 1, 2015
ipoque, a Rohde & Schwarz company, has launched R&S Net Sensor; a technically advanced IP application classification probe. R&S Net Sensor allows mobile and fixed network operators and service providers to extract meaningful network traffic information and subscriber behavior data as well as identify statistical trends, either in real-time or aggregated up to one year. The new product has been demonstrated at the LTE World Summit in Amsterdam (June 23-25) and is ipoque’s first release under the R&S brand.
According to a global study, mobile data traffic reached 2.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2014 and will continue to increase nearly tenfold between 2014 and 2019, with the share of mobile video traffic expected to rise from 55% in 2014 to 75% of the total traffic in 2019. This data explosion puts a significant amount of pressure on operators who have to deal with declining ARPU (Average Revenue per User) while at the same time investing in networks capacity to ensure subscribers’ Quality of Service. This is where IP traffic and subscriber analysis can provide the insight needed to increase revenue and ensure subscriber QoS.
Traffic analysis based on IP application classification delivers detailed insights into the traffic on the operator’s network, for instance per subscriber, protocol, location and device-type. Traffic analysis monitors subscriber Quality of Service and enables operators to plan capacity to avoid network congestion and generate additional revenue through targeted marketing of new preferred application service options.
“Understanding the traffic on a network is essential to make smart investment decisions and identify new revenue-generation opportunities and this is what R&S Net Sensor delivers”, explained Dirk Czepluch, Managing Director and CTO at ipoque GmbH. “R&S Net Sensor is based on our leading application classification engine R&S PACE and provides the highest accuracy application and protocol detection and rich metadata extraction through passive probing at full line speed.”
R&S Net Sensor also features a special internal interface to R&S PACE which ensures that all updates to detection and metadata extraction performed on the R&S PACE software are reflected in the R&S Net Sensor’s output in real-time.
Automatic remote updates to the IP classification library ensure that the probe capabilities stay current with minimal effort. This guarantees operators very fast time to market for detection and classification of formerly unknown new applications and protocols. It is available at various line speeds from 1 Gbps to 40 Gbps to cater to the requirements of small networks through to the demands of large operators.
Operators can use R&S Net Sensor to make the following decisions:
• Network management and planning:
o Is it sufficient to invest in capacity expansion or is a traffic management solution required?
o What proportion of traffic is video? Should the video optimization capability be enhanced?
o What was the network traffic profile at a particular date and time when many customers complained of low data speed?
• Marketing & product management
o Do subscribers with a certain type of device consume more social media data? Should we market a bundled offer including an unlimited social media plan together with a certain type of phone?
o How do certain subscriber categories react to tariff changes, offers, events, etc.? Use this knowledge to refine the marketing strategy.
With this product release, ipoque becomes integrated into the Rohde & Schwarz brand. ipoque has been a subsidiary of the Munich based electronics group with a global sales and service network since 2013.
R&S Net Sensor as well as other ipoque products is part of the most comprehensive portfolio of technically advanced mobile network testing solutions from Rohde & Schwarz and its subsidiaries. Customers profit from an integrated portfolio of solutions coordinated from planning to optimization and operation. The single-supplier solutions provide insight into customer experience from the user equipment to the core with the added benefit of a global support network.