How to Solve a Problem Like Congestion

Networks are subject to peaks and troughs of traffic as demand rises and falls. It’s difficult to ensure smooth and even flow of traffic at all times. Like a road transport system, there can be blackspots that tend to suffer worse from congestion, or there can be peak intervals when traffic surges and then periods when traffic drops to negligible levels.

Anticipating such uneven demand is challenging. Managing it when it happens is doubly difficult. Network planners can take steps to ensure that blackspots are eliminated, but there’s a strong likelihood that they will occur elsewhere at a different point in time. Real-time events influence user behaviour, increasing demand and, inevitably, exceeding estimates.

That’s why network engineers need to be able to respond to traffic ebbs and flows in real time, adjusting network policies and effecting traffic shaping plans in order to ensure that things go smoothly – and customers are kept happy.

To achieve this requires constant monitoring of the network, observing traffic and checking against key performance metrics to ensure that variables such as latency and jitter are kept within desired target ranges. Network engineers need to be able to spot traffic and to benchmark performance – as traffic enters, transits and exits the network. Performance monitoring has to be accomplished at the edge, the core and at egress points.

One traffic reaches the core, it can be checked to be sure that it maintains performance levels – but this requires the insertion of tools that can cope with the vast flows of traffic that pass into and through networks. If latency from a specific area suddenly jumps, action needs to be taken. If congestion suddenly occurs, rerouting or dynamic capacity allocation must take place – immediately, not in six months time.

Reliable monitoring solutions are required in order to ensure that networks respond in real-time to changes in demand. This needs high-performance, optimised hardware and software, capable of interfacing to the range of optical and Gb/s transmission interfaces deployed in the evolving NGN. Without such equipment, integrated to the control platforms, network management becomes an impossible task. To solve a problem like congestion – or indeed, any of the problems that can confront network traffic, network operators must diligently monitor traffic at all points of the network and be ready to respond.