Understand packet slicing when using 5G technologies
With the explosion of IoT, (over 21 billion connected devices in 2021) carriers are needing to find innovative techniques to monitor their complex high speed networks, plan for future growth and maintain regulatory privacy compliance. Packet slicing is a helpful tool for these new networks. However, some companies, Like Network Critical, have taken basic packet slicing functionality and added some new twists that are particularly useful for 5G networks.
Background
TAPs and Packet Brokers are devices that connect to network links and make mirror copies of traffic passing through the network. They
then pass the duplicated traffic on to specialized monitoring tools that analyze traffic. The visibility services these tools provide allow network managers to understand traffic passing through the network for purposes of maintaining reliability, diagnosing and correcting network issues and planning for future growth.
In large, complex networks such as mobile carriers, the sheer volume of traffic will overwhelm monitoring tools. Therefore, network managers use features on intelligent TAPs and packet brokers to reduce the traffic volume being served to the tools. For example, if a study is being conducted regarding the origin and destination of traffic, only the headers are required to be analyzed to get that information. The payload of the packet is irrelevant to this study. Therefore, a packet broker can strip out the header and only send that information to the analysis tool. This makes the analysis faster, much more efficient by relieving the analysis tool from opening and analyzing entire packets when only a small part of that packet is required for the study. The packet slicing feature literally cuts an IP packet into smaller pieces. Note that the tools in this example are receiving a copy of the network traffic so live traffic is not impacted by slicing the copies sent for analysis.
5G Networks Add Network Complexity
As 5G networks grow, and 5G connected devices proliferate, the need for monitoring quickly becomes more acute for carriers. The flexibility of 5G architecture, including the ability to connect with a wide variety of devices requires more granular information about the traffic passing through the network.
In the days of standard voice telephone networking, network statistics were fairly static. There were certain times of the day when the
network was busy and other times not so much. Network planners had solid statistics from which to work. With that foundation, network
diagnostics and planning were relatively straight forward.
Fast forward to 5G architecture. With flexibility, speed, mobility and low latency, a wide variety of devices can be connected. Some
examples beyond smart phones include autonomous vehicles, elevators, industrial robots, medical devices, municipal traffic control
and a wide variety of consumer devices. The traffic characteristics of these devices vary dramatically.
Beyond the wide variety of traffic characteristics, 5G networks also utilize a small cell architecture. Unlike earlier generations of mobile
networks which use fewer cell towers of greater power per tower, 5G uses more towers and lower power per tower. The result is more
individual sites and more links to monitor. All the smaller power cell sites must be connected to each other and ultimately to landline
switching centers. This adds complexity to physical monitoring as well as the massive task of monitoring virtual network slices within
the links.
Devices and applications come from many sources beyond the control of the carrier. However, the responsibility for access, availability and
reliability of these third party devices and applications ultimately fall on the carrier. The solution for 5G mobile carriers is complete and
provides accurate visibility of network traffic.
IoT devices also generate massive amounts of consumer data useful to marketers and manufactures alike. Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) supports the collection of all this payload data. With access to massive consumer data from payload conversations, comes the responsibility of protecting certain proprietary data and allowing access to other data.
Accessing only source and destination data does not paint a complete picture of traffic volume. How can network managers perform traffic management and planning which requires full access to all data, yet protect the privacy of conversations?
Age of Specialized Tools
Network providers are responsible to protect the privacy of data that they collect. Government regulations such as GDPR (Europe), PIPEDA (Canada), BDSG (Germany), Cyber Security Law (China) and many others require strict data management and protection. Network
monitoring tools, intrusion protection tools, firewalls, proxy’s and other tools are instrumental in maintaining legal compliance and avoiding financial and legal liabilities.
All of these network tools require access to links and visibility to traffic. It is cost prohibitive and architecturally inefficient to deploy all the required tools on all the links. In addition to cost, each directly connected tool can add delay to the network and reduce overall system
reliability. Fortunately network packet brokers from Network Critical provide an effective method to monitor and protect multiple links with
multiple tools in a controlled and efficient manner. 5G networks add complexity to network monitoring but using intelligent packet brokers simplifies the monitoring by providing physical tool management as well as advanced specialized efficiency and compliance features.
5G Needs More Than Slicing
We now know that 5G networks are complex. We know that there will be more physical links and a wider variety of traffic types that need
specialized monitoring than in previous mobile network generations. We know that speeds are higher and latency lower adding complexity to packet analysis. We know complete traffic visibility will be critical to maintaining reliability, availability and future growth planning. We know there are regulatory data privacy compliance requirements that hinder payload analysis. We know that packet slicing alone, while valuable, does not provide a complete traffic picture because the variable payload is not taken into account.
The Monitoring Solution
The solution is intelligent and innovative visibility technology that allows packet payloads to be transformed so packet size remains the
same but the packet payload information is removed or masked. Now, accurate traffic information can be sent to tools without running
afoul of privacy regulations. Network Critical’s packet brokers offer powerful packet slicing as well as header stripping for advanced filtering and payload masking for compliant analysis. The SmartNA-X/XL PacketPro™ has been carefully designed by experts to provide
unique packet processing functionality.
5G Needs More Than Slicing
Packet manipulation is performed by analyzing packets and identifying user specified headers. These headers can be stripped or modified
leaving the rest of the packet available to be sent to monitoring tools for analysis. Note that the PacketPro™ module, from Network Critical, is much more than a “packet slicer.” It can also perform complete data packet manipulation including the masking of payload information. Payload masking is critically important to comply with data privacy regulations as noted above. Simply put, the 1’s and 0’s in the payload are masked by all 1’s or all 0’s making the actual conversation unreadable, but leaving in tact the exact size of the entire packet.
Optimize the efficiency of monitoring tools by presenting only the traffic that the tools need for the task at hand. The innovative PacketPro™ designed by Network Critical is a self-configuring module that can process and modify packets being passed to monitoring
tools. The intelligent packet processor is also fully configurable for customization and growth with your network.
The answer to complexity is simplicity. Network Critical packet brokers with the PacketPro module provide 100% complete and accurate 5G network and packet monitoring while complying with international data privacy regulations. These intelligent features also save CAPEX by reducing the number of connected monitoring tools. They reduce OPEX by simplifying monitoring deployment and ongoing management using an innovative Graphical User Interface called Drag-n-Vu™.