Huawei iFIT (In-situ Flow Information Telemetry)

2019: Testing in 5G network

On July 9, 2019 the company Huawei announced Beijing Unicom China Unicom Beijing the test of iFIT technology which is carried out together with the company (branch v) in network 5G. The solution iFIT increases recovery speed after failures, allowing Beijing Unicom to build an intelligent visualized transport network of a 5G using such opportunities as in-band measurement of a flow at the millisecond level, monitoring of quality of network services in real time according to requirements of agreements on the service level (SLA) and localization of faults of the second level which are difficult for detecting.

As noted in Huawei, with the advent of new services during an era of a 5G of the quality requirement of network strongly raise: for example, services virtual and augmented reality VRAR (/) require the big bandwidth (from 80 to 260 Mbps) and a reduced share of loss of packets (from 10-5 to 10-6). The same way at sale of services telecom operators focus attention not on network transmission capacity, and on service of users. However to achieve the necessary service quality on the transport network it appears quite difficult.

Traditional approach assumes sending benchmark packages at operation and network maintenance for data acquisition about its quality. However such approach does not allow to obtain exact data, to reveal difficult detected failures and insignificant data loss as ways of benchmark packages and packets of service can strongly differ. Really, usually the accuracy of detection does not exceed 10-3 that can quite lead to the fact that data loss at provision of services of virtual/augmented reality will not be detected. Besides, when using traditional approaches the minimum interval of collection of information is measured for minutes. As a result of fault it is possible to diagnose after an event or after decline in quality, and the period of diagnostics lasts for several hours, days or even weeks, emphasized in Huawei.

According to the statement of Huawei, in the innovative solution of iFIT hardware approach with detection of losses is applied to each packet that allows to reveal even insignificant failures in network traffic in real time. Instead of sending benchmark packages of iFIT directly measures information transferred in packets to obtain quality data of network, for example, a delay time and coefficient of loss of packets for each service. Such approach allows to increase the accuracy of detection of loss of packets to 10-6 that in 1000 times more in comparison with traditional methods.

The solution iFIT can be used together with telemetry according to the data collected with a millisecond interval for service quality visualization in real time and also for identification and a location of faults in read minutes. Thus it is possible to provide fulfillment of requirements of SLA for services of a 5G, including VR and AR, claim in Huawei.

According to Huawei, even when there were difficult detected problems, such as loss of one packet or exceeding of time limit on a delay, the solution iFIT yielded exact results and displayed information on failures in NCE. Then the acquired information was analyzed for fast optimization of ways of data transmission.

"iFIT does not require external sensors. Office payments of routers can receive key performance indicators of real data streams consistently, with a high accuracy of a delay. It is big break in methods of operation and maintenance of transport networks. With release of commercial licenses 5G we will be able to accelerate provision of services on this network, and the solution iFIT will help us to provide quality which is required according to SLA", noted Mr. Zang, the head of Beijing Unicom Transport Center

2018: iFIT presentation

In October, 2018 the Huawei company submitted the iFIT project for consideration to Engineering council of the Internet (IETF). iFIT from Huawei is a solution on in-band measurement of a data stream which was deployed on a commercial basis.