High-Accuracy Network Monitoring and Control: HANMOCNTT Network Innovation Center

This technology is titled as HANMOC (High-Accuracy Network Monitoring and Control) and employs the Segment Routing (SR) function, whose use as a next-generation forwarding technology has been in progress; it aims at the usage in the enhancement of the maintenance operation necessary for the 5G age and its quality assurance, in determining the routes for telecommunication service, etc. This technology aims at the usage in the enhancement of the maintenance operation necessary for the 5G age and its quality assurance

In new telecommunication services in coming years such as e-sports, Cloud gaming, and connected cars, an index called jitter that represents communication delays and the jitters in delays is going to be important, too, in addition to the conventional quality monitoring such as the quantity of data communication and packet losses.
As the existing means for monitoring delays, there are measurements with ping^*1 and the ones that employ the function called TWAMP (Two-way Active Measurement Protocol) defined in RFC^*2 4347 for network devices; however, as any of these monitoring means involves the behaviors made by software processing, monitoring with high accuracy used to be difficult because of the changes under influence of the load in software processing.
In this technology, the packets for the monitoring used for measurement are all embodied in hardware processing and the monitoring is performed in high accuracy to the unit at the level of µ second; thus, it aims at the usage of monitoring results in the network operation, in determining the routes of telecommunications, and so forth.

1. *1ping: The software for confirming the reachability of a node in an IP network
2. *2RFC (Request for Comments): A group of specifications defining various facts in relation to the Internet under management of IETF

• To realize the avoidance of the deterioration in measurement accuracy resulting from software processing and the reduction of its cost by implementing the time stamp of the sending time of the packets for monitoring as well as of its returning time with the use of general-purpose hardware
• No need of time synchronization with the network side by adopting the type in which probe packets return to the local system with the usage of the SR technology. To take measurement of links between nodes in a single system.
• The measurement of delays in each class enabled by specifying the QoS class of a probe packet.
• Applicable regardless of device vendors as the requirement in this technology for applicable networks is the support of SR only.

• Applicable to the traffic engineering for providing optimal communication paths to the user and VPN (Virtual Private Network) based on the highly accurate measurement of delays and jitters.
• Applicable to the detection and prediction of the occurrence of micro-bursts and silent troubles that may give influence on telecommunication quality by detecting anomalies/idiosyncrasy based on monitoring results.
• Applicable for reporting on the quality of the network and to the monitoring of the possibility of achieving the requirements for the SLA (Service Level Agreement)

NTT Network Innovation Center - Transport Network Systems Project