Government network operators can’t manage what they are unable to see. But the latest technology developed by Ciena and deployed by CenturyLink is solving that problem by providing network operators with the ability to view their entire IP MPLS networks so they can more easily diagnose and solve network congestion issues.
In a complementary webinar produced by MeriTalk, officials from Ciena and CenturyLink explain Route Optimization and Analytics (ROA) technology, and how it can play a vital role in making sure that network operators can meet their critical mission requirements by reducing service interruptions and slowdowns.
By using ROA technologies, network operators can visualize events that have led to past network congestion and outages, enable “what-if” modeling scenarios to plan network maintenance, and optimize network path planning and new service provisioning.
Bart Kelly of Ciena’s Blue Planet Software organization provides a high-level overview of the company’s ROA platform including inventory, service order management, and route optimization and analysis capabilities.
“The way that ROA fits into the puzzle,” Kelly explained, is to gather telemetry and metrics associated with Layer 3 network elements including routers. ROA then becomes “an expert system that allows us to apply analytics … and let us understand all of the information that is coming out of the network.”
Kelly discussed severed ROA use cases for government and higher education customers that have allowed them to understand network congestion points often caused by misconfigurations, and improve network performance over long distances.
Seana Gilliland, Vice President Public Sector Program Management at CenturyLink, agreed that network routing behavior illuminated by ROA may not be easy to discern otherwise. “I love that we can team with providers like Ciena to bring custom solutions to our customers.”
ROA, Gilliland said, is vendor agnostic, and “allows you to analyze your current infrastructure so you can monitor your network transformation.” CenturyLink, she said, “can help with all your network needs, including ROA … and help lay the pathwork for innovation.”
For the full story, please be our guest for MeriTalk’s “Meeting Agency & Education Missions with Network Automation & Analytics” webinar.
