Session Border Controller Probe for Unified Communications Root Cause Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Unified communications performance degradation due to issues like jitter, packet loss, and network delay leads to poor call quality, making it difficult to identify the root cause effectively.
Innovation Solution
An agentless probe at a session border controller actively collects network and call performance metrics to determine the root cause of degradation by analyzing metrics such as endpoint network response time, signaling response time, and jitter, identifying the affected portion of the infrastructure without requiring multiple health statistics.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If multiple health statistics and metrics are collected to identify root cause of performance degradation, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the most critical metrics (jitter, packet loss, delay) needed for root cause identification, rather than collecting all possible health statistics. This selective extraction reduces monitoring overhead while maintaining sufficient precision for identifying performance degradation causes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the network monitoring into distinct functional components: active probes at network elements, metrics collection at session border controllers, and analysis at monitoring entities. This segmentation allows each component to handle only necessary data, reducing overall system complexity.
2Reliability
If comprehensive performance metrics are monitored across the network, then reliability of performance assessment is improved, but loss of time for data collection and analysis increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements active probes that continuously pre-collect performance metrics (jitter, packet loss, delay) at network elements before degradation occurs. This preliminary data collection ensures reliable assessment is ready when needed, eliminating time delays associated with retrospective analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces session border controllers as intermediaries that aggregate and pre-process performance metrics from multiple sources. This intermediary layer reduces the time required for comprehensive analysis by preparing consolidated data in advance, enabling faster root cause identification when degradation is detected.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising determining a plurality of metrics of data trafficked through a session border controller (SBC), the SBC in communication with an endpoint device and positioned along a data transmission connection between a network and a IP multi-media subsystem (IMS); detecting a jitter performance metric of the data; in response to detecting the jitter, determining that an endpoint network response time (NRT) is degraded; in response to determining that the endpoint NRT is degraded, determining that an endpoint signaling response time (ART) is degraded; and in response to determining that the endpoint ART is degraded, identifying the endpoint device as a root cause of the jitter performance metric of the data.