Assurance Sensor Control

Overview

The Skylight sensor: control plays the role of an extended Performance Element in a Skylight Performance Monitoring Solution. A single sensor: control can manage thousands of performance monitoring sessions. The sensor: control relies on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to link to small footprint hardware Skylight modules (Skylight SFP compute sensors and Skylight sensor: modules). NFV permits wirespeed processing power and provides a level of microsecond precision that exceeds that of standalone performance elements. Management, test control and result-processing functions have been migrated to a centralized controller, and processing functionality was ported to Accedian’s own FPGA programmable processors. The sensor: control handles the CPU requirements of thousands of Skylight modules and each module acts as a remote port for the sensor: control.

Skylight modules perform Service Activation Testing (SAT), traffic conditioning, standards based OAM, and Performance Monitoring (PM) under the control and command of the sensor: control. These miniaturized devices generate full line rate test traffic and maintain thousands of PM sessions per unit. The sensor: control also maintains synchronization information for each endpoint, permitting highly precise one-way measurements for a variety of remote locations.