In a significant strategic initiative aimed at revolutionizing customer service delivery in West Africa, a major regional telecommunications operator has embarked on a collaboration with the prominent South African systems integrator, SGT Solutions, and global testing leader, Keysight. This partnership centers on the deployment of the Hawkeye active monitoring platform, representing the initial phase of a comprehensive project designed to proactively manage network performance. The core ambition is to fundamentally enhance the overall quality of experience (QoE) for the operator’s subscribers, moving the industry standard away from a reactive, “break-fix” maintenance model toward a more sophisticated and preventative operational framework. This proactive stance is poised to identify and resolve potential network and service issues before they can escalate into service-degrading events for end-users, setting a new benchmark for network reliability and customer satisfaction in the region.
The Shift from Reactive to Proactive Network Management
Understanding Active Monitoring
The central technology driving this transformation is the Keysight Hawkeye platform, an advanced operational solution engineered for the continuous, active monitoring of distributed production networks. Unlike passive monitoring systems that function by merely observing existing traffic patterns, Hawkeye operates on a fundamentally different principle. It methodically injects its own predictable traffic into the live network, creating a controlled environment for analysis. This active approach enables the system to precisely measure, control, verify, and troubleshoot the intricate network infrastructure on a constant 24x7x365 basis. The ultimate objective of this methodology is to identify, quantify, and assist in resolving potential network and service issues long before they escalate to the point of causing noticeable service degradation for subscribers. This represents a critical departure from traditional, reactive troubleshooting models, positioning the operator to anticipate and prevent problems rather than just responding to them after they have already impacted the customer base.
A key design principle of the Hawkeye platform is its emphasis on seamless integration within the operator’s established technological ecosystem. It features an open framework that allows it to connect effortlessly with existing Operational Support Systems (OSS), Element Management Systems (EMS), and various other IT environments. This ensures that the platform complements and enhances, rather than replaces, the operator’s current infrastructure and workflows. The web-based interface provides secure, multi-user access for scheduling a wide variety of tests, storing the resulting data, and performing detailed real-time analysis. The system offers immediate pass/fail verification for instant feedback on service status and utilizes rapid interval testing for swift fault detection. A particularly powerful capability is its trend analysis feature, which meticulously examines performance patterns based on the time of day and day of the week, helping network engineers to pinpoint recurring congestion points or persistent performance bottlenecks that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The Value Proposition of Prevention
The multifaceted value proposition of the Hawkeye solution delivers several key benefits that extend beyond simple fault detection. A primary advantage is its capacity for the continuous and automated monitoring of Service Level Agreements (SLA), Quality of Experience (QoE), and Quality of Service (QoS). This constant surveillance provides the operator with an unparalleled, real-time awareness of network health across all segments. The system is configured to trigger immediate, actionable alerts for any critical events that threaten service quality, allowing for swift and targeted intervention before a minor issue can cascade into a widespread outage. This constant feedback loop empowers the operator to not only meet its contractual SLA obligations but also to consistently exceed customer expectations for service reliability and performance. The ability to maintain this high level of service consistency is a significant differentiator in a highly competitive market, directly contributing to customer loyalty and retention. Furthermore, the platform’s utility extends into the crucial pre-launch phase of new services, facilitating comprehensive service verification and validation. This ensures that from the very first day a new offering is made available, users experience high-quality, reliable services, which in turn significantly reduces the volume of subsequent support calls and minimizes the risk of early customer churn. The solution also dramatically accelerates troubleshooting processes when issues do arise. By executing targeted validation tests, network engineers can rapidly isolate whether a problem stems from the underlying network infrastructure or a specific application, drastically cutting down the mean time to resolution (MTTR) for root cause analysis. Finally, Hawkeye enables objective, data-driven assessments of network performance and customer experience, allowing the operator to evaluate service quality against defined benchmarks. This capability also supports the analysis of long-term performance trends to inform strategic planning, network optimization efforts, and future capital investments.
The Technology in Action
Architecture and Key Performance Indicators
The high-level architecture of the implemented solution is composed of several seamlessly integrated components designed for robustness and scalability. At its core are the Hawkeye Management Servers, a pool of servers responsible for the intricate tasks of controlling, scheduling, and reporting on the multitude of active tests conducted across the entire network. These servers are built upon a powerful MySQL database, ensuring efficient and reliable data storage and retrieval for both real-time analysis and long-term trending. The actual testing is executed by a geographically distributed network of Active Probes. The initial deployment for the West African operator includes a strategic combination of both hardware and software probes to ensure comprehensive coverage: 16 units of the XR3000 hardware probe and 10 units of the software-based ixProbes. This hybrid deployment strategy is further enhanced by versatile multi-OS software probes compatible with Windows, Linux, Android, and Docker environments, providing extensive reach across the operator’s diverse network locations, from the central core to the network edge, including on-premises data centers and cloud environments.
These sophisticated probes are capable of executing an extensive array of tests, ranging from fundamental layer 2/3 traffic injection to highly complex application-level service testing that accurately simulates real user interactions. The endpoints generate active traffic to validate a comprehensive list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) critical to the end-user experience. For general network performance, this includes vital metrics such as upload and download speeds, one-way latency, round-trip time (RTT), packet loss, and both downstream and upstream jitter. For voice services, the system measures the industry-standard Mean Opinion Score (MOS) alongside other critical call quality metrics. Video service quality is meticulously assessed through KPIs like encoding rate, video start time, initial and average download rates, the count and duration of buffer stalls, and the average bit rate. For web services, it measures crucial timing elements like DNS resolution time and total page load time. The platform also provided advanced capabilities for QoS policy profiling, verifying that bandwidth shaping and QoS enforcement were functioning correctly across up to six different service classes for both TCP and UDP traffic.
The Power of a Strategic Partnership
The success of this ambitious project was fundamentally anchored in the collaborative partnership forged between the telecommunications operator, the integration expertise of SGT Solutions, and the technological innovation of Keysight. This powerful synergy delivered substantial, tangible benefits that collectively transformed the operator’s service assurance capabilities. These included vastly enhanced network visibility, the critical ability to conduct rigorous pre-launch service assessments, and access to a suite of advanced troubleshooting tools and detailed performance insights that were previously unavailable. Suraj Ramlall, the Chief Technology Officer at SGT Solutions, affirmed the strength of the deployed solution and the collaborative effort, stating, “The Hawkeye portfolio is a market-leading solution. We at SGT Solutions are elated to work with the West African telecommunications operator and Keysight to improve QOS and QOE and enhance the value realised across the network.” This endorsement highlighted the project’s immediate impact on service quality.
As a trusted and deeply integrated Keysight partner, SGT Solutions leveraged its extensive technical expertise to manage the complete network ownership cycle for the operator. This end-to-end management encompassed every stage of the project, from the initial requirements analysis and meticulous system design to the complex implementation phase and the provision of ongoing operational support. This holistic approach provided the operator with more than just a new technology; it delivered a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. The successful deployment not only elevated the operator’s service quality but also established a new operational paradigm. By shifting from a reactive to a proactive model, the operator fundamentally changed its relationship with network performance, ensuring that customer experience became the central focus of its technical and strategic decision-making processes. This initiative served as a powerful demonstration of how strategic partnerships and advanced technology can converge to redefine industry standards.