Spirent Landslide adds CNF Testing

Spirent Communications has added cloud-native function (CNF) resiliency testing to its Spirent Landslide solution to continuously test the impact of CNF performance on the delivery of 5G Standalone services.

Already the leading solution for 5G Standalone core testing, the expansion of Landslide’s capabilities to include CNF testing within a single test solution platform will help further address the evolving needs of mobile network operators (MNOs) and Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) as they transition to cloud-native environments.

The 5G standalone core, with its service-based architecture and embrace of the public and private clouds to support rapid time-to-market and scalable network operations, has the potential to unlock exciting business opportunities with new ways to deploy, operate, and manage networks and services. While the new disaggregated and distributed architecture provides for a dynamic multi-cloud, multivendor ecosystem, it also presents a raft of daunting new challenges for service providers.

“The need for integration and interoperability across the 5G network means not only dealing with the complexity of how to incorporate new cloud infrastructures and virtual network functions with legacy systems and processes, but also how to test and optimize the performance of these new distributed infrastructures to ensure that they will all work together as they should,” says Anil Kollipara, VP of Automated Test & Assurance Product Management at Spirent.

“Cloud-native demands completely new processes to realize the efficiencies and operational benefits, while each CNF has unique performance expectations within the cloud environment. Adding cloud resiliency testing to Landslide’s already considerable testing and validation capabilities will help network service providers more easily tackle the challenges of embracing new cloud environments to deliver the high-quality 5G services that end users are demanding.”

Patrick Kelly, Founder and Principal Analyst at Appledore Research added, "Spirent Landslide's CNF resiliency testing introduces a vital advancement in core 5G testing for mobile operators tackling the intricacies of 5G standalone and advanced networks. This enhancement streamlines complex pre-test and post-deployment procedures, optimizing 5G services to ensure high performance and reliability in the ever-evolving CNF environment."

Spirent Landslide is the only single pane solution that can generate real-world 5G traffic and simultaneously impair the 5G cloud core to assess and correlate its impact on 5G services. This is especially important with cloud deployments, where failures are the norm and CNFs must be designed to be resilient to avert serious consequences with 5G service quality. MNOs and NEMs have traditionally relied on manual testing processes and self-developed automation scripts, leading to inefficiencies and increased testing complexity. Ambiguity surrounding ownership of 5G services in CNF environments is also presenting additional concerns for service providers, requiring a fundamental shift in the testing mindset from reliability-focused legacy networks to resilient and scalable CNF networks.