Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) hardens the core of LTE networks, with the IxLoad solution, to provide greater insight and visibility into the performance of rapidly growing LTE networks. Driven by an increase in subscribers and the use of media-rich applications as well as new approaches to service monetization, the scalability and intelligence of the mobile core is now more critical than ever. The Ixia IxLoad solution eliminates the guesswork of network performance and delivers predictability and actionable insight to mobile carriers.

The growth of smartphone use and the support of differentiated services, such as high-quality video, also mean a growth of difficult-to-predict signaling traffic. Signaling traffic involves the underlying communications that enable user authentication, mobility, monetization, billing, policy management and Quality of Service mechanisms. Signaling traffic can overwhelm networks and cause detrimental outages, and in fact, smartphones generate as much as twenty times more signaling traffic compared to existing feature phones. Most network failures occur from the failure of critical signaling infrastructure nodes, and carriers need to have a way to ensure LTE networks are resilient and scalable.

Product highlights

Mobile carriers must be proactive in maintaining and safeguarding their network infrastructure, especially as costly network issues and outages occur under extreme scale. The Ixia Ixload solution enables mobile carriers to circumvent these expensive outages by cost-effectively prototyping a real-world network in the lab.

• Ixia optimizes network performance by putting all LTE-enabled network devices through a battery of tests specifically designed to comprehensively evaluate performance and scalability.
• This delivers a repeatable, large-scale validation approach that not only mirrors real-world environments to ensure network resiliency but is also virtually impossible to create by any other means.
• Using Ixia solutions enables both network equipment vendors and carriers to address many challenges unique to LTE networks’ signaling infrastructure, including:
  • Baselining of performance in the lab under a wide variety of real-world and extreme conditions.
  • Supporting a change system control process by quickly evaluating network changes before live deployments.
  • Going beyond product data sheets to understand the true capabilities of any mobile infrastructure device including Home Subscriber Systems, Policy Servers, Billing Systems, Diameter Routing Agents, and Mobility Management Entities.
  • Testing virtually any mobile core device with support for nearly three dozen Diameter-based interfaces.

Industry commentary

“Mobile carriers need a better way to manage the growing impact of signaling messages in their network, and it’s becoming increasingly important that these deployment strategies combine proven, telco-grade Diameter routing with enhanced network visibility,” said Ben Volkow, vice president of product development at F5. “Ixia offers a unique solution that allows operators to predict the scalability of their network infrastructure with clear insight into network performance.”

“Network failures and service quality issues are costly for mobile carriers – not just for the bottom line, but also for customer turnover, and as failures often occur under extreme scale, it has previously been impossible to proactively learn about problems until after network deployment,” said Joe Zeto, director, product marketing at Ixia. “With the ability to emulate real-world conditions on a broad range of devices, the Ixia LTE test solution provides unprecedented insight into network behavior to take the guesswork out of understanding network scalability.”

Ixia will showcase LTE test and performance solutions at 2013 Mobile World Congress, Feb. 25–28, 2013, in Barcelona. Please visit us at booth No. 6C91 for more information.

About Ixia

From the lab to the network to the cloud, Ixia solutions optimize networks and data centers to accelerate, secure and scale the delivery of applications and services. Ixia delivers the industry’s only solution with complete visibility into critical network, data center, applications and services. Ixia provides actionable insight for enterprises, service providers, government agencies and equipment manufacturers with solutions that test, assess and optimize networks. Ixia solutions use predictive data to accelerate and secure application delivery, giving customers the confidence to know their business networks are engineered to be understandable, dynamic and resilient. For more information, please visit www.ixiacom.com.