Aviz Networks Service Node 2.2 details 4G to 5G handover, packet loss and jitter KPIs

Aviz Networks’ Service Node Release 2.2 adds control-plane handover visibility between 4G EPC and 5G core, new packet reliability and latency KPIs, and updated hardware and DPI capabilities. The update matters for enterprise and telco teams that monitor subscriber sessions across multiple network domains.

Research Overview

The release focuses on improving observability across telco and IP environments, with attention to continuity during mobility and measurement quality for user experience. It also extends hardware options for running the service node datapath.

The blog frames Service Node 2.2 as a platform strengthening effort built on prior releases, including a telco-oriented R2.1.

Key Findings

Release 2.2 introduces control-plane mediation for session continuity during handovers between EPC and 5GC, using passive observability. It also adds KPI computation for TCP packet loss and TCP/UDP jitter to support troubleshooting where traditional counters may not show the full picture.

The update further expands deep packet inspection capabilities, including a DPI engine with application and subcategory coverage and a mechanism to upgrade DPI signatures without redeploying services.

Technical Breakdown

For handover and switching, the service node maintains correlated session tracking across EPC and 5G interfaces and performs session upgrade logic based on IMSI matching between the EPC and 5GC sides. During handovers, it updates metadata exports to Kafka with real-time fields including RAT type, user type, IP, and TEIDs.

For packet reliability KPIs, the service node computes TCP packet loss by passively analyzing mirrored traffic flows, tracking TCP sequence numbers, retransmissions, and acknowledgment gaps. It correlates the analysis with session metadata such as IP addresses, VLANs, QoS tags, and tunnel identifiers including GTP in telco contexts and VXLAN or GRE in data center contexts.

Product Update

The release adds Subscriber-Aware Load Balancing running standalone on the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU. The feature uses a P4 programmable datapath and embedded ARM cores, and the blog states that ASN SALB on BF3 DPU is generally available.

Service Node 2.2 also adds support for NVIDIA ConnectX NICs, with packet processing that leverages DPDK acceleration. In addition, it introduces a next-generation DPI engine that analyzes traffic payloads and, according to the blog, identifies over 2,700 applications and 9,000 subcategories.

Operational Impact

The DPI engine’s payload-based application and protocol identification is intended to support policy and compliance use cases, including bandwidth allocation based on application understanding. The blog also describes DPI dynamic upgrades that update the detection engine and protocol signature database on the fly without service interruption or full software redeployment.

For KPI computations related to active communication, the release adds KPI active communication support in data center mode using byte and time-duration threshold-based KPI computations.

Overall, Aviz Service Node Release 2.2 extends session continuity for 4G-to-5G handovers, adds packet loss and jitter KPIs, and updates hardware support and DPI operations with dynamic upgrade capability. Blog Signals brief is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.