Customer Success Story
Consolidated Communications streamlines core network upgrade with automated testing
Consolidated Communications delivers amazing experiences by putting customers’ needs first. With a network spanning 50,000 fiber route miles, Consolidated is a top 10 U.S. fiber provider with expertise in turning technology into high-value, reliable communications solutions for consumers, businesses, and carriers.
Consolidated needed to ensure the successful rollout of a new core network to enable rapid growth of its broadband, commercial, and transport businesses. Juniper Paragon Active Assurance was key to allow network upgrades to be performed without customer impact.
Overview
| Company | Consolidated Communications |
| Industry | Service Provider |
| Products used | Juniper Paragon Active Assurance |
| Region | Americas |
Zero
SLA credit reimbursements
Zero
Touch testing, thanks to automated templates
Zero
Post-maintenance impact on customers
From painful to painless with service assurance
“Delivering stellar customer experience is at the center of our mission,” says Kenji Ogura, director of IP core engineering at Consolidated.
That mission was complicated by limited visibility into the current performance status of services, especially as Consolidated built out a new core network. As a result, identifying and resolving issues was often a manual and resource-intensive process for the engineering team as they ensured service level agreements (SLAs) were consistently met.
Maintenance windows were limited, increasing the chance that service changes could cause downtime or unhappy customers. The network operations team had limited troubleshooting and testing tools to actively test and monitor the network. Manual regression and post-maintenance testing was time-consuming, costly, and would not scale.
Consolidated wanted to actively test and monitor network service performance as it upgraded its core network. Automating testing moved Consolidated from a massive-touch process to a single-touch process.
Automated testing lifts customers’ experiences to next level
Consolidated added Juniper Paragon Active Assurance to fully automate network and service testing across the service lifecycle. Automation improved regression testing during and after changes or maintenance.
With Paragon Active Assurance, Consolidated can detect performance issues before they impact customer services, especially by load testing services and validating SLA adherence before services are launched to market. The engineering and operations teams solved difficult configuration, quality-of-service bleaching, network routing, and packet-size issues that formerly impacted service quality.
Paragon Active Assurance’s self-driven portal for zero-touch test automation and easy-to-use templates simplify synthetic testing for traffic types, including HTTP, DNS, SIP, RTP, and IPTV. Paragon Active Assurance simulates end-user experiences and continuously reports how customers’ services are performing. The operations team can be alerted of issues before they develop into problems.
Streamlining operations saves time and money
Consolidated can plan, validate, and schedule changes so they do not impact service quality or the customer experience as the core network is upgraded. Automated testing reduced expensive repairs and the team is no longer chasing fleeting service issues. Consolidated realized cost savings from avoiding SLA credit payments.
Paragon Active Assurance delivers much more proactive insights and value than passive probes that only reactively identify device issues once they occur. Consolidated benefits both by automated testing and active data-plane measurements that enable customers have consistent, high-quality services and superior experiences.
Operational processes are automated and regression testing and change maintenance have become hassle-free. What had been a challenging group effort with lots of manual requirements is a single-touch process.
A smooth rollout of the new core network allows Consolidated to keep its promise of amazing experiences for all its consumer, business, and carrier customers.
The Products
Juniper Paragon Active Assurance
Cloud-native test and service assurance software provides Layer 2-7 active measurements across physical and multicloud networks.
Juniper builds automation into all products for programmability and offers a suite of tools to help you benefit from automation in your environment. We believe that delivering assured experience is the first (and most important) requirement for your NetOps and DevOps teams.
Published April 2022