By: André Vink- Co-authored by André Vink and Vitaliy Ivanov -
Mobile providers are transitioning from physical perimeter infrastructure to cloud-based infrastructure to gain greater scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. This shift enables them to swiftly adapt to growing mobile data demands, rapidly deploy innovative services, and efficiently manage network resources. Cloud infrastructure also offers the agility to scale operations in real-time based on user demand, reducing the need for significant upfront capital investments in physical hardware.
At the same time, it accelerates the introduction of cutting-edge technologies and services, enhancing the overall user experience and helping providers remain competitive in a fast-evolving market.
However, this transition also brings new challenges, particularly in network visibility and security. In traditional setups, mobile providers maintained direct control over physical networks, enabling clear visibility and straightforward security protocols. In cloud environments, network functions are dispersed across multiple locations and platforms, complicating the monitoring and management of performance and security. This dispersion can create blind spots, where traffic or activities are not fully observable, making it harder to detect and respond to threats or performance issues.
To address these challenges in cloud-native infrastructure, a Virtual Packet Broker (VPB) plays a crucial role. By aggregating and filtering traffic, a VPB ensures that reporting and analysis tools receive a coherent stream of data corresponding to individual user sessions. Since data traffic is dispersed across multiple cloud instances and services, VPBs deliver advanced data processing and traffic management capabilities essential for maintaining comprehensive network visibility and security.
Why It Matters?
When subscriber traffic explodes across multiple clouds, tools often drown in duplicates, incomplete sessions, or missed threats. Niagara Networks has introduced a new release of its Virtual Packet Broker, integrated as part of the Cloud Intelligence Platform (CIP). This enhancement extends advanced capabilities to support cloud-native deployments, including modern virtualized mobile networks and other virtual use cases. Here’s how CIP solves that. Maintaining visibility in cloud-based mobile infrastructures requires more than just traffic aggregation. Niagara Networks’ Cloud Intelligence Platform (CIP) integrates advanced functions that ensure monitoring, security, and performance tools always receive clean, accurate, and actionable data. Here are a few of the essential features:
- Traffic Deduplication
Cloud environments often capture the same packets at multiple collection points, which can overwhelm monitoring tools with duplicates. CIP automatically eliminates redundant packets so that only unique traffic
is processed. This improves tool performance, reduces resource consumption, and lowers costs. - GTP Correlation
In mobile networks (GPRS, LTE, 5G), subscriber sessions are spread across multiple tunnels and packets.
CIP performs GTP correlation to track and link these sessions, ensuring that analysis and security tools see a coherent flow of user data. This is critical for troubleshooting, billing accuracy, and security monitoring. - Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
Going beyond headers, CIP’s DPI capabilities analyze the payload of packets to identify applications, protocols, and metadata. This enables mobile providers to perform application-level monitoring, enforce compliance, and strengthen security by detecting anomalies within encrypted or application-specific traffic. - Load Balancing
High-traffic cloud environments demand elasticity. CIP intelligently distributes traffic across multiple monitoring and security tools, preventing overloads and ensuring consistent performance. This load balancing also allows seamless scalability as demand grows.
Together, these capabilities create a comprehensive visibility framework that enables providers to adapt to cloud complexities while ensuring service quality and user experience.
Inside the CIP Application
To better illustrate how Niagara Networks’ Cloud Intelligence Platform supports mobile providers, here are example views from the application:
- Generic Dashboard Screen
Provides an overview of system health, traffic, and monitoring status, with the ability to view all VPB deployments across public clouds from a single console.
- System Information & License Page
Displays detailed platform data, including active licenses and deployment status.
- Flow Information & Mobile Visibility
Delivers insights into subscriber sessions and correlated mobile traffic.
- Traffic Statistics
Offers real-time analysis of packet flows, throughput, and deduplication results.
Conclusion
Niagara Networks’ Cloud Intelligence Platform solves the visibility challenge in cloud-based infrastructures by ensuring that monitoring and analysis tools always receive a coherent view of cloud network data traffic. With built-in support for major public cloud platforms, CIP is fully prepared for multi-cloud strategies, giving providers the flexibility to evolve with accurate infrastructure planning. By enhancing advanced mobile visibility in cloud-native architectures, CIP delivers features such as GTP correlation, subscriber session tracking, and application-level insights - empowering providers to maintain performance, strengthen security, and deliver a seamless user experience across today’s complex and distributed mobile networks.
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Niagara Networks are industry specialists in network visibility, providing advanced network visibility solutions for the specific needs of individual enterprises and national large and complex networks.
Don’t leave your network vulnerable to security threats, schedule a consultation with one of our network visibility experts today to evaluate your network visibility challenges.
