Anritsu Announces 5G Standalone NEMs’ vTAP Support on MasterClaw for Encrypted Traffic Monitoring

Anritsu is pleased to announce the availability of Encrypted Traffic Monitoring from Network Functions’ Virtual TAPs (Terminal Access Points) in the MasterClaw 5G Standalone (5G SA) Service Assurance solution, in cooperation with a major European Network Equipment Manufacturer (NEM).

This addition to MasterClaw’s capabilities provides visibility into a 5G Standalone (5G-SA) Core Network's natively encrypted traffic, specifically, into the sections deployed according to the 3GPP’s Service-Based Architecture.

“The 5G SA architecture brings many advantages, so Communication Service Providers are willing to deploy it as soon as possible in their live networks,” explains Angelo Baccarani, Senior Product Manager for Virtual Probes and Data Acquisition at Anritsu. “However, these advantages come at the expense of added complexity in monitoring interactions between the Network Functions (NFs). This makes it difficult to guarantee that the subscribers will get the best Quality of Experience. One challenge is the encrypted nature of the communications between the 5G Core Network Functions in Service-Based Architectures (SBA). Network monitoring is made difficult, if not impossible. Anritsu now provides a solution to address this.”

NEMs are meeting this challenge by providing Virtual TAPs, integrated with their Network Functions, capable of forwarding clear (not encrypted) HTTP2 traffic (also known as the L7-layer) from the Service-Based Interfaces (SBI) to 3rd-party probes for monitoring. Although the format and transport of such data are not yet standardized, such an approach is becoming widely accepted to solve the so-called 'SBI visibility problem'.

Anritsu now provides a software option in its physical or virtual probe (MPA, Multi-Protocol Analyzer) to ingest L7-layer traffic into the MasterClaw Service Assurance solution for 5G. It will correlate with all the other protocol procedures visible on non-encrypted interfaces (Point-to-Point, Access, or Edge), giving an end-to-end consolidated view of the subscribers’ activity.

Anritsu looks forward to working with its current customers, new customers, and partners that are planning or deploying a 5G SA Core based on Service Based Architecture, to help them maintain deep visibility into their networks.

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