R&S®Probe Observer

Ready-to-use network analytics suite
for high-performance network monitoring

R&S®Probe Observer: packet-level truth in real time

Modern communication networks are more complex than ever: traffic volumes are growing rapidly, encryption is now standard, and architectures span core, edge, and cloud environments. At the same time, operators must ensure excellent service quality while keeping costs under control.

Traditional monitoring tools often show that something is wrong — but not why. To efficiently operate modern networks, engineering and operations teams need real-time, packet-level visibility, even in encrypted environments.

This is exactly what the R&S® Probe Observer provides: deep network insights that helps operators identify issues faster and act before customers are affected.

The turnkey traffic analytics solution extracts data from a passive copy of live network traffic, ensuring integrity, security and peak performance of networks. This solution by ipoque is designed to delve deeper than traditional monitoring tools, detecting deviations in Quality of Service (QoS) in real-time, optimize bandwidth usage and fortify security, making it an essential tool for communication service providers (CSPs) to improve their network’s efficiency.

Featuring the technologically leading VPP DPI engine R&S®vPACE and advanced real-time packet processing, R&S®Probe Observer offers high-quality information about network traffic, subscriber sessions and network metadata. Discover the unseen, resolve issues before they escalate, and transform your network management with unparalleled visibility.

Use cases of R&S®Probe Observer

Align R&S®Probe Observer with your specific needs and delve deeper than traditional monitoring tools:

Traffic analytics and monitoring
Gain real-time insights into network usage and use network KPIs to support your decisions. Use historical data to identify changes in network usage and behavior. Find network optimizations and improve capacity planning.
Network testing and performance management
Monitor bandwidths and use protocol-specific network performance indicators, such as latency, jitter and TCP statistics for data-driven decisions.
Network/App performance monitoring
Provide detailed insights to pinpoint the root cause of performance issues, reducing mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to resolve (MTTR).

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R&S®Probe Observer at a glance

The R&S®Probe Observer is equipped with powerful features enabling you to see beyond the surface and proactively resolve issues before they become critical:

Highly performant: With R&S®vPACE at its core, the solution processes network traffic at near‑wire speeds with low resource demands.
Live processing: Analyze network traffic in real time to gain insights into your network’s performance.
High accuracy and reliability: Identify IP traffic with virtually no false positives.
Management: Manage and configure the components of your R&S®Probe Observer with a central interface.
Analytics and reporting: Utilize a data analysis and high-performance network monitoring frontend, and see network KPIs, such as QoS at a glance and aggregate information per subscriber.

Encrypted traffic intelligence: Benefit from advanced machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques to also classify traffic when it’s encrypted.
Dashboards: Create customizable dashboards to get an overview of the most important metrics. Manage and share them to align with your business needs and stakeholders.
GTP subscriber correlation: Correlate control plane (GTP-C) and user plane (GTP-U) traffic to link user activity to specific subscribers, providing valuable insights into usage patterns.
Geolocation insights: Map, analyze, and visualize worldwide traffic flows based on geolocations for critical fault detection, GeoIP security, and performance monitoring."

Why choose our network probe solution

Integrates seamlessly with your existing environment through open interfaces.
Gain real-time visibility into network traffic and network performance.
Optimize network performance and adapt services to user needs.
Monitor the metrics that matter most with customizable dashboards.
Track key network KPIs, including QoS, and aggregate information by subscriber.
Keep your solution up to date with ongoing technical support, maintenance and optimization.

By proactively detecting and resolving network issues, take control of your network, streamlining operations and driving business success. The flexibility and adaptability of R&S®Probe Observer to different deployment situations and customer requirements make it easy to extract all the required insights, even when dealing with highly specific implementations.

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Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Find the answers to most common questions.

What kind of data do network analytics probes collect?

Network analytics probes collect network traffic data at packet or flow level, e. g. NetFlow, sFlow and IPFIX, including information such as IP addresses, ports, protocols, latency, packet losses, and bandwidth. Depending on the vendor, network probes can also perform Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to identify application data.

Are network analytics probes passive, or do they impact network traffic?

Most network analytics probes are passive, capturing data via SPAN/mirror ports or network TAPs, so they do not impact live traffic. However, there are also active probes, which send specific test packets to measure network performance.

How is the network analytics probes’ scalability and long-term viability ensured?

To scale with increasing data volumes, network probes can be scaled both horizontally and vertically. Additionally, regular software updates, support for new protocols, and integrations with AI/ML models for enhanced protocol detection are offered.

How do network analytics probes integrate with existing network management or SIEM systems?

Network analytics probes typically support standard protocols and formats such as SNMP, Syslog, REST APIs, or Kafka, allowing for seamless integration into network monitoring systems (e. g. SolarWinds, PRTG) or SIEMs (e. g. Splunk, QRadar). Data can often also be automatically processed via APIs or exports.

What network topologies and speeds are supported?

Common probes support a range of network speeds (1 G, 10 G, 40 G, 100 G+) and are compatible with different network topologies, from traditional data centers to SDN/NFV environments. The ability of the probe to handle the existing data volume and format is essential.