The combination of active and passive monitoring for 360-degree service assurance offers a cost-effective, powerful solution to the challenge as data volumes grow and puts a strain on costs.

But there’s a helpful twist: many operators are already removing passive user plane monitoring solutions because of rising costs – and risking reduced visibility into user problems. But Emblasoft’s approach restores visibility at much lower cost, because it relies on the combination of passive control plane monitoring and active monitoring for both control and user plane layers.

No one is surprised by mobile data growth anymore, it’s inevitable and just something to anticipate and deal with. But, it does have implications for how you process that data at scale, for service assurance programmes, because doing so is becoming increasingly cost-prohibitive.

It’s not just data volumes per se – it’s also the difficulty of getting to that data across increasingly complex networks. End-to-end encryption, for example, is making it increasingly difficult for passive monitoring of the user plane to inspect the traffic it observes. CI/CD also means that the network is continually changing. Passive monitoring of the user plane is struggling to keep pace.

Eliminating passive monitoring of the user plane creates blind spots for service assurance

As a result, some operators are seeking to eliminate passive monitoring of the user plane. But this scale of data traffic is only set to increase. Eliminating user plane monitoring to reduce costs is one thing, but it can lead to blind spots in traffic analysis and diagnosis when issues arise. In turn, this can lead to undetected issues with end-user QoE and SLA obligations.

There is, however, a cost-effective solution.

The solution is to use the powerful combination of passive and active monitoring.

Even if passive monitoring of the user plane is cost-prohibitive, active monitoring can deliver visibility into the user plane, at a fraction of the cost. The fusing of the two hits the sweet spot between complete visibility of your services and cost.

But the combination of active monitoring and passive monitoring represents more than cost optimisation – it also creates something neither can achieve alone.

Active monitoring runs on both control and user plane, so when combined with passive monitoring of the control plane (remember, this is still affordable) it’s not just filling a gap, it’s creating a baseline that you can compare against.

In practice, both run simultaneously in the live network, active monitoring creates synthetic sessions, for any scenario, from active agents, while passive control plane monitoring gains data about real subscriber traffic, which is observed by passive probes in the network. These synthetic sessions simulate user activities exactly as they are in the real world – just excluding the radio and devices.

A combination of passive and active monitoring in the user plane is a powerful tool for service assurance

So, if passive monitoring detects a fault in the control plane data it processes, active monitoring can be used to reproduce it in a controlled environment, which means that you can turn a real-world failure into a testable, diagnosable, repeatable scenario.

Emblasoft’s solution integrates passive control plane and active monitoring for both user and control plane. As a result of these integrated capabilities, you can automatically run different scenarios, based on detected conditions and to diagnose problems to find the solution. Put simply, the combination of both provides 360-degree service assurance.

For example, if a control plane issue is observed from passive monitoring, active monitoring can be used to determine if the issue lies in the network or in a connected device. Passive control plane monitoring discovers the fault, active provides the resolution.

Figure 1 outlines the Emblasoft solution – combining active monitoring of control and user planes together with passive monitoring of the control plane for the 5G SA core.

Figure 1. User plane visibility at significantly lower cost

This combined and parallel visibility is what makes diagnosis faster and more precise for operators. The combination doesn't just tell you that something is wrong, it tells you what kind of problem it is, and where to look to find it… and by running different simulations to pinpoint the issue and to determine the optimum solution.

Figure 2 shows how passive and active monitoring differ, but how they can also complement each other.

Figure 2. Passive and active monitoring in harmony

How can Emblasoft solve the user plane monitoring challenge?

Many operators have historically run passive and active monitoring from separated systems. With some retiring passive user plane monitoring, there is an opportunity to consolidate passive control plane monitoring and active control and user plane monitoring into a single solution, with a single interface and common data store.

The real value is in the data, which is open and readable. Using both capabilities in tandem means that actions can automatically be triggered based on observed conditions in each domain, identified, and corrected.

The unified data layer is what makes such correlation possible, enabling predictive alerts, automated reproduction, automated diagnosis, natural language Q&A, and other AI-enabled actions.

This is why the Emblasoft solution is unique – operators don’t have to operate two solutions separately. It connects both tools into a single interface providing 360-degree visibility and assurance of both the control and user planes.

Yes, passive user plane monitoring can be costly and is a genuine issue with the growth in data volumes, driven by the rapid scaling of 5G. Of course, data traffic volume growth shows no sign of slowing – on the contrary, it is only set to increase. It’s hardly surprising that many operators are reconsidering their investments in passive user plane solutions – and even removing them altogether.

But removing passive monitoring of the user plane does not have to lead to gaps in your coverage and insights. By combining active and passive control plane monitoring, we can correlate all relevant data in a single platform, secure complete 360° service assurance coverage, without the cost spiralling as mobile volumes continue to grow.

Find out how Emblasoft can solve your user plane data monitoring challenges by contacting our sales team to discuss your challenges and opportunities.