[Huawei's iFIT solution wins Best of Show Award Special Prize at Interop Tokyo 2019]
The judging panel, comprised of experts in the industry, recognized the solution's capabilities in implementing fast service recovery and intelligent network O&M. Such capabilities include millisecond-level in-band flow measurement, real-time monitoring of network service quality to meet service level agreement (SLA) requirements, and second-level silent fault locating.
In network O&M, a conventional approach uses test packets to obtain data. This approach fails to accurately reflect service quality information because the path of test packets may be inconsistent with that of service packets, especially for difficult-to-detect silent faults such as the loss of a few packets. In addition, the shortest interval at which information can be collected is minutes. As a result, faults can be diagnosed only after a service fault or quality deterioration occurs. The fault diagnosis period is several days or even weeks.
Huawei's innovative iFIT solution takes a new approach: it uses per-packet detection to identify minor exceptions on a network. The solution does not use test packets. Instead, it directly measures information carried in packets to obtain information such as the delay and packet loss of each service. The iFIT solution can be used together with telemetry's millisecond-level data collection to implement real-time service quality visualization and quickly fault demarcation and locating.
At Interop Tokyo 2019, Huawei used the NetEngine 8000 series routers on the forwarding plane and Network Cloud Engine (NCE) on the control plane to simulate various network faults. Even when hard-to-detect faults occurred, such as one packet was lost or the delay of a single packet exceeded the threshold, iFIT demonstrated its strengths in accurately measuring and displaying the fault information on NCE. NCE is then able to analyze this information and quickly optimize paths.
"With the advent of 5G, diversified service types and differentiated SLAs will bring huge challenges to transport networks," commented Hank Chen, President of Service Router Domain, Huawei Data Communication Product Line. He continued, "5G-oriented high-precision detection technology has always been the direction of our research." Speaking specifically about Huawei's iFIT solution, Mr. Chen said, "We are highly honored that Huawei's iFIT solution has been awarded the Interop Tokyo Best of Show Award Special Prize. This signifies its recognition by the Japanese ICT market, which is noted for its engagement with state-of-the-art technologies and stringent requirements regarding product quality."
In October 2018, Huawei submitted the iFIT draft "In-situ Flow Information Telemetry Framework" to the IETF. Huawei's iFIT is the industry's first in-band flow measurement solution for commercial deployment. To date, Huawei has signed and released multiple iFIT-related IETF drafts together with multiple operators, which is a testament to the fast standardization of iFIT. Leveraging more than 20 years of experience in the network domain, Huawei will continue to be customer-centric and build innovative products and solutions that adapt to development trends, helping customers achieve business success.
