iMaster NCE Digital Map for Campus Networks, Streamlining Network O&M and Promoting Network Sustainability

The Intelligent World 2030 report predicts that the total number of global connections will reach 200 billion by 2030, with cloud services accounting for 87% of enterprise application spending. However, the digital economy era has led to a surge in the number of network nodes, making network management more complex and challenging. But despite this, there has not been a significant increase in O&M manpower, with fewer people required to do more work. With tens of thousands of network devices and millions of IoT terminals connected, the workload of O&M personnel has increased exponentially. Moreover, over-reliance on individual experience in network O&M often leads to undetected network issues, which in turn results in poor experience and frequent fault complaints. For example, troubleshooting freezing during video meetings can take over a day, and enabling APs at night leads to unnecessary power consumption.

Unlike the static network topology used in traditional O&M, Huawei iMaster NCE for campus scenarios uses the network digital map functionality to create a multi dimensional representation of networks, terminals, and applications. This enables quick problem identification and automatic recommendation of energy-saving policies, preventing maintenance issues arising from manual analysis. By leveraging advanced technologies like big data computing engines, AI, and search algorithms, the network digital map offers four-dimensional campus network visibility, troubleshooting, deterministic application experience assurance, and energy conservation. This helps customers transition from the traditional static topology-based O&M to the dynamic high-definition digital map-based O&M. The network digital map provides insight into the network, improving O&M efficiency of enterprise campus networks.

Experience-Centric Network Digital Map, Improving O&M Efficiency

Traditional campus networks typically consist of a number of wired, wireless, and branch networks, including a large number of devices and a relatively small number of people. However, the O&M of such networks is typically passive and driven by complaints, which can severely hinder service development requirements in the Internet era. To address this issue, Huawei's iMaster NCE for campus networks makes use of the network digital map to clearly display the experience of NEs, terminals, and applications, enabling quick identification of the root cause of faults. This approach saves time and labor, while avoiding maintenance problems caused by manual analysis.

The network digital map helps address issues such as video freezing, choppy voice, and difficulty in demarcating and locating faults, as well as long recovery time. To be specific, it uses the packet conservation algorithm for Internet (iPCA) to assess the quality of each data flow for critical applications, providing packet loss statistics and visualization for all forwarding nodes from Wi-Fi access to the campus egress. When a fault occurs, the fault location can be quickly and accurately identified. Additionally, AI-powered big data analytics, full client journey playback by time and space, and scenario-specific baseline evaluation are used to proactively alert VIP terminals of potential issues before they impact the network experience of these uses. This ensures high-quality connectivity for VIP terminals at all times, no matter where they are or what device they are using.

The holographic visualization provided by the network digital map offers an intuitive display of delay, jitter, and packet loss rate across diverse networks, spanning from links to terminals and then to applications. It also enables real-time detection of the experience status of the entire network, terminals, and applications. Leveraging AI-powered big data analytics, the network digital map provides direct mapping and visibility of campus services and network faults, expediting the resolution of network issues and ensuring the best connection experience for enterprise offices.

A Chinese university recently implemented Huawei's network digital map functionality to monitor network quality in real-time, ensuring seamless connectivity for over 10,000 teachers and students. The network digital map offers full visibility into terminals, events, things, and networks, proactively detecting faults and helping quickly locate and rectify them. Since its launch six months ago, there have been no reports of faults from students, and download speeds in the dormitory area have increased by over three times. Online high-definition video streaming is now free of freezing, significantly enhancing the network experience for students. The network digital map can record terminal network activity and journey in real-time, allowing for efficient troubleshooting of issues. When students encounter network issues, network O&M personnel can use their ID to search for the time of the issue, the connected device, and the network signal quality, and automatically identify the root cause of the issue. This has greatly reduced the time required for troubleshooting and transformed network operations from passive to proactive, with network O&M personnel now being seen as the hero rather than being blamed for the issues.

"Bits Drive Watts", Saving Energy by 30%

To reduce energy consumption, some enterprises or universities resort to manual power-off and power-on cycles of entire offices or classrooms. However, this approach often yields limited energy savings. Huawei iMaster NCE digital map for campus networks offers a more effective solution. It analyzes real-time network usage in each area, and uses tidal algorithms to recommend tailored energy-saving policies. With just one click, APs can be powered off during idle hours, with some of them maintaining basic signal coverage. During busier periods, the APs can be automatically powered on, optimizing energy usage.

A leading private technology enterprise in China provides multi-network convergence operation services to a vast terminal base of over 600,000, and is now managing over 80,000 NEs. As the number of wireless devices on the live network grows, the customer is concerned about the increasing power consumption of Wi-Fi devices during off-peak hours, with yearly electricity bills rising by approximately 30%. Huawei's network digital map-powered energy-saving solution provides real-time visualization of network energy consumption, enabling the customer to optimize energy usage. By leveraging the tidal pattern of campus Wi-Fi network traffic, the solution intelligently recommends energy-saving time windows to ensure optimal dumb terminal experience. The customer has already successfully deployed intelligent energy-saving features for APs on their wireless networks, achieving a significant 30% reduction in AP power consumption, as measured by the electricity meter.

Huawei iMaster NCE digital map for campus networks offers a comprehensive management, control, and analysis platform for enterprise headquarters, production campuses, and branch offices. It enables unified management of wired, wireless, and SD-WAN networks, offering visualized fault detection in multi dimensions — network, terminal, and application — and allowing for root cause identification. Additionally, it delivers end-to-end optimal video and VIP terminal experiences, and automatically recommends energy-saving policies to simplify campus O&M and make the network more energy efficient and environmentally friendly.