Your 5G infrastructure monitoring checklist
5G technology, with its speed 10 times faster than 4G LTE, can help businesses realize many long-held goals, like real-time augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), distributed machine learning within the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, smart cities, edge computing, etc.
While 5G technology is imminent and likely to transform the pace of business operations, it will bring scalability challenges along with changes to networking architectures.
Challenges that come with 5G technology
Growth in technology leads to an increase in the number of transmitters and receivers required for effective connectivity, meaning a problem in any of these devices would affect connectivity as well as other dependent processes.
Software-defined networking (SDN) controllers, that manage flow control for improved network management and application performance, will control network traffic. But these are prone to configuration or programming errors, leading to chaos in controlling traffic in networks and sub networks.
With network functions virtualization (NFV), common functions like routing, load balancing, and securing firewalls will be replaced on traditional network devices with virtual machines performing the same function. Any down device, be it traditional or virtual, could inadvertently cripple the stability and functionality of a network.
Does your monitoring tool have these features?
It is best that every aspect of a network is constantly monitored to obtain a complete picture of what's happening in a network.
Besides monitoring key parameters like status, performance metrics, and traffic, the monitoring tool should also be equipped with new capabilities that can cope with 5G technology. With 5G, wireless wide area networks (WANs) could serve as a primary connectivity method, so measuring performance across these connections will become critical for enterprises to ensure effective integration of 5G networks. The tool should be capable of handling any bandwidth speed without compromising on performance. So, what should be in place for a monitoring tool to comprehensively monitor the changes and challenges that 5G technology brings?
Network map
The monitoring solution should also provide a network map of basic information that displays an overview of the whole network at a glance. It should show the status of a network device and the actual traffic that flows through each device. Additionally, it should provide various performance metrics that will help track the overall performance of all devices in the network and should be quick enough to detect changes.
Security system to tackle software-defined networking
The tool should have a tightly monitored security system so that access to the SDN controller is restricted. It should be able to efficiently back up the configuration and restore it when there is a failure in the SDN controllers.
Monitoring for virtualized environments
The monitoring tool should also ensure that the performance metrics of individual virtual network function (VNF) entities that relate to a service are associated correctly. For instance, the tool should be able to capture if a virtual domain name system (vDNS) is performing its functions correctly, and measure the request and response time taken by the vDNS.
Alerting system
Above all, the solution should send alerts when devices go down, when configured thresholds are breached, and when the configuration of any device changes along with the details of the network administrator who made the change. Alerts should also be generated when the VNF association breaks, when there's a breach in the SDN controllers' security, or when the controllers fail.
Last but not least, the tool you choose should offer all these solutions in one place.
Site24x7 has got all this covered; it's a cloud-based, scalable monitoring solution that provides access to data from any location.
Monitor your 5G network with Site24x7 to stay on top of your network performance. Start monitoring now!
Do you know how 5G can pave the way for emerging technologies? Check this blog out!