Engineers at public network operators used to be able to count on a certain amount of action on the network, and could generally track capacity needs on a gradual upward path. Not anymore. Today, the quickly growing number of mobile endpoints, their sometimes unpredictable movement across the network, various web-related events, and just the dynamic nature of the IP network, can make capacity analysis and planning extremely challenging.

But VPIsystems is answering that call by delivering end-to-end capacity analysis solutions for mobile networks. And some of the world’s largest mobile network operators are already using these tools.

Russ Green, senior vice president of marketing and product management for VPIsystems, this week at ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Austin told TMC that a big U.S. mobile service that’s in merger discussions is among the users of its end-to-end capacity analysis tools. The company is also talking to a service provider in Canada and seeing a lot of interest from carriers in the Middle East and Far East.

The VPIsystems solutions on this front are threefold. The company offers software that looks at subscribers, devices and services on the network. It offers a backhaul analysis and optimization solution, which is in use by various carriers including Telstra (News - Alert) and XO Communications. And it has a new product that does short-term congestion avoidance in radio access networks.

The new, RAN-focused solution can alert a mobile operator a few hours before congestion is likely to occur, so that service provider can do subscriber-based management to lessen the load. The software looks at historical performance data and network topology to identify areas of likely congestion. The service provider can respond to expected congestion by doing bandwidth throttling to select customers or taking other steps to mitigation the situation, Green explained.

In today’s dynamic wireless ecosystems, service providers may only have a few weeks advance notice on events – like the introduction of the iPhone (News - Alert) 5, for example – that can have a major and lasting impact on capacity requirements, Green said. That said, these kinds of capacity analysis and congestion avoidance tools are becoming increasingly important.

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