Performance assurance provider Accedian updated its SkyLight performance monitoring system to apply network functions virtualization (NFV) monitoring capabilities to service provider and enterprise networks.

Accedian’s monitoring product actively tests networks by mimicking user traffic with packets and measuring the time it takes for a specific packet to travel between two points.

“When you think of a network, there’s two paths of communication, and one path might be more clogged than another,” said Ramiro Nobre, VP of global strategy and solutions at Accedian. “What we did was leverage this ability into SkyLight and made the packet run even faster.”

The NFV aspect of the monitoring system is allowing the test sessions to be initiated from any location through remote ports. Instead of relying on proprietary servers, branch offices can plug in the monitoring system to their existing hardware and immediately gain insight from that location.

This makes it ideal for hub-spoke type of connection testing. “Hub” meaning a centralized location or network core, and “spoke” meaning any other remote locations.

For example, when using the product to test network performance on a mobile network, operators will test the connection between its core and all of the cell sites. In addition to that, it can test the connection in-between the core and remote sites as well.

This allows for one-way monitoring, which is the ability to identify latency or jitter on the exact path that it’s occurring by isolating the A-to-B path from the B-to-A path.

Global operators like Reliance Jio and Telefonica use SkyLight to maintain visibility of network connections among different locations.