Background
There are four parties in this case study: the customer (a Credit Union), a service provider named Universal Network Services (UNS), its partners: a carrier network provider and Bumblebee Networks. The customer contracted with the service provider to provide a DIA (Dedicated Internet Access) service. The service provider leases circuits from the carrier and deploys Bumblebee CPE device (BN-CPE-1000) to the customer premise. The CPE serves as demarcation and monitoring functions. The deployment diagram is as below.
The deployment went smoothly. The service provider pre provisioned the CPE with all WAN information assigned by the carrier. The CPE device is a plug and play at the sites. All devices came up, registered with the Bumblebee portal and went into operating state.
Diagnosing faulty power plug
Two days later, the service provider Ops team and Bumblebee Ops team received alert message, one of the devices stopped sending heart beat messages to the portal and the WAN is declared down. The service provider immediately contacted the customer and asked them to check if there was power issue to the CPE. A quick walk through by the local IT identified a faulty power supply. Upon plugging the power to a different outlet, the device came up and service is restored.
Diagnosing faulty carrier circuit
Then a few days later, Ops teams received multiple alert messages from originated from a different device. That WAN connectivity would be up for a few hours and then went down and up multiple times throughout a day. During "up" period, the Ops team ran a diagnostics on the device and found the CPE device WAN interface experienced increasing number of TX collision and RX packet loss. The error indicates physical layer problems on the circuit.
The Ops team immediately filed a ticket to the carrier and attached the diagnostics errors. The carrier later dispatched a technician and uncovered a faulty media converter. After replacing the media converter, the circuit came back and it has been stable.
Reduced MTTR (Mean time to resolution)
Within the first weeks of deployment, Bumblebee solution was able to significantly reduce MTTR when connectivity issues occur. This is accomplished by the platform's ability to proactively monitor the WAN links, sending out alerts and remotely run diagnostics tools on the CPE devices.
After the two incidents, the customer Ops team was also added to the alert message group and they now are also the first to be notified on the alerts. In addition the customer has access to the Bumblebee portal for visibility of WAN Link Utilization, Application Visibility and Application Performance Insights.
Summary
Comparing to their previous experiences working with service providers, the customer is delighted to be able to receive alert messages and access dynamic visibilities of their WAN connectivities. The service provider is pleased too, "Bumblebee platform helps us streamline deployment, maintenance and troubleshooting, we look forward to our continued partnership and future success", says Jeff Beer, CEO of UNS Systems.
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