Iris Session Analyzer

Powerful call trace tool finds sessions of interest and quickly determines the root cause of signaling and user-plane issues.

Your Challenges

The dramatic increase in mobile data traffic volume and the growing complexity of mobile data technology create the potential for signaling and user-plane problems that can impact the subscriber’s Quality of Experience (QoE). When such problems occur, operators need to quickly identify and analyze the specific calls and sessions that fail to deliver the required performance.

During the troubleshooting process, the network operations team needs to see an accurate representation of all messages or protocol data units (PDUs) in a session. Incorrectly including or excluding messages from the session can dramatically increase the effort required to debug subscriber and network problems.

Traditional call trace tools make it difficult to view the user traffic during a session. Network operations needs a call trace tool that is easy to learn, simple to configure and has an intuitive workflow. Network operations also needs the ability to easily provide the information identifying the issue to network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and other parties that can help provide solutions.

How We Can Help

The Iris Session Analyzer call trace tool identifies and diagnoses the specific calls and sessions that violate specified performance criteria while providing improved usability and workflow efficiencies. Iris Session Analyzer’s protocol correlation engine can be easily customized for individual network deployments to provide consistently accurate full-session correlation of all protocols. Iris Session Analyzer has very flexible searching and filtering options to help return a concise set of sessions and messages matching the user’s criteria. Iris Session Analyzer’s intuitive, easy-to-learn graphical user interface minimizes the number of mouse-clicks. Guided startup wizards and packaged template options in Iris Session Analyzer minimize the learning curve and reduce trace setup time.

Iris Session Analyzer generates an HTML report with active hyperlinks that simplify navigation, for example from the ladder diagram to the PDU details. Iris Session Analyzer also can export the session PDUs to a PCAP file. Iris Session Analyzer represents mobile data as flow summaries that are conveniently summarized for debugging. The G-10 probe in Iris Session Analyzer can be configured to store user-plane protocol data, enabling users to retrieve user-plane messages and bring them into the ladder diagram for in-depth user-plane debugging with full analysis and decoding.

Features and Benefits

  • Iris Session Analyzer startup wizard walks the user through configuring the capture filter and starting the capture.
  • Fully customizable summary and PDU tables in Iris Session Analyzer enable users to set the column order and save column sets for different work flows.
  • Iris Session Analyzer columns can be filtered and sorted with a single click.
  • Uncluttered ladder diagram can be filtered to hide uninteresting messages and nodes
  • An integrated Wireshark display can be seamlessly launched from within the Iris Session Analyzer interface
  • Iris Session Analyzer and G10 probes provide a high-level summary for every flow as well as the ability to drill down into the actual PDUs
  • Iris Session Analyzer flow details identify 90% of user plane problems by reporting response codes, transaction failures and relevant data KPIs.
  • Iris Session Analyzer follow-the-flow flow analysis feature allows users to view the same IP flow at different monitoring points and enables users to follow the path of the flow through the network.
  • Follow-the-flow flow analysis feature quickly identifies the area where the problem is occurring, reducing time to resolution
  • Session export capabilities help provide problem information to third parties such as NEMs and make it easy to store the data as part of a trouble ticket.
  • Active links in Iris Session Analyzer HTML reports provide rapid navigation capabilities.
  • PCAP export capability makes it possible to review data Wireshark or other PCAP tools
  • Iris Session Analyzer CSV export capabilities provided for summary and PDU tables

Applications

  • Identify and solve specific user or session-related network problems
  • Give insight into trends in session-related problems
  • Identify network equipment that may have issues and provide information to its manufacturers to help them solve the problems.

Identify And Solve Specific User Or Session-Related Network Problems

The Iris Session Analyzer call inspector tool enables the network operations team to collect and analyze an individual user’s session traffic spread throughout a network. With powerful probe support and customized correlation capabilities, Iris Session Analyzer presents a clear view of the end user’s activities so that troubleshooters can identify and solve whatever issues may have taken place in a user session.

Iris Session Analyzer allows the network operations team to serve their subscriber base by increasing stream analysis resolution precision and resolution velocity, reducing customer downtime and decreasing dissatisfaction and churn. At the same time, it empowers their support personnel to solve problems with greater speed and accuracy. First-level troubleshooters can clear a higher percentage of trouble tickets, while expert users acquire the tools to track down and resolve the toughest issues.

Give Insight Into Trends In Session-Related Problems

As the network operations team processes trouble tickets, individual members might not have a wide enough perspective to identify common root causes that point to systemic problems such as malfunctioning network elements. Iris Session Analyzer’s ability to share data among the entire network operations team makes it possible to quickly identify and correct common root causes. The result is that subscribers’ Quality of Experience is improved and the troubleshooting workload is reduced.

In addition, Iris Session Analyzer’s save and export capabilities allow troubleshooters to share best practices with colleagues such as instructions on how to solve common problems which can reduce turnaround time across the network operations department.

Iris Session Analyzer’s ability to reach across the network to identify problems helps the network operations team solve configuration issues and equipment bugs. For example, the Iris Session Analyzer follow-the-flow flow analysis feature allows users to reach past network protocol nodes to identify equipment such as routers or firewalls that may be impacting network stability. Once a problem is identified, the data can be exported for external use by a third party that does not have the Iris Session Analyzer. This stream inspector feature enables the network operations teams to bring the right experts to the table to solve the problem.

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