VIAVI NITRO Core Traffic Storage Agent (TSA) Mobile Network Service Assurance Appliance

The VIAVI NITRO Core Traffic Storage Agent (TSA) is a data access agent for the NITRO Core platform. It passively monitors control-plane and user-plane IP traffic as well as TDM, and generates metrics on network, service and customer KPIs (SMARTmetrics). These metrics can be used by NITRO Core applications or by third-party KPI applications. TSA also captures and indexes control-plane traffic so it can be retrieved quickly for transaction-tracing troubleshooting.

Traffic processing

TSA captures control-plane traffic frames, writes them to disk and indexes them in real time. The VIAVI-patented indexing method indexes by IMSI, IMEI and MSISDN for fast search and retrieval. Instead of processing all captured traffic continuously, the system supplies the traffic for specific end-user data sessions or calls to troubleshooting applications on demand. VIAVI states that typically less than 0.01% of end-user sessions or calls need packet-based analysis, so on-demand processing reduces the overall cost of the solution.

Third-party feeds and application classification

Besides supporting NITRO Core applications, TSA can send SMARTmetrics to non-VIAVI third-party applications or data lakes. Operators can tailor the feed content so it contains only the data the receiving application needs. Feeds cover both control-plane and user-plane data and are delivered at timed intervals. A DPI engine identifies end-user services and applications, with support for more than 5,000 applications. User-plane records are enriched with service, APN/5G slice, handset, location and subscriber information.

Platform role

Within the NITRO Core portfolio, TSA supplies the subscriber-centric data used for KPI dashboards, diagnostics, anomaly detection, roaming, coverage and subscriber experience analysis. Its KPI-based troubleshooting works with the CEA and Performance Explorer apps. Line-rate control-plane capture supports transaction tracing in applications such as NITRO Core Session Trace.