Latency: The Silent Killer of Digital Experiences

Latency is the time it takes for data to travel between two devices. When I browse the Internet, I send a request to a certain web server on the Internet and it will send me the requested web page back as a series of multiple components consisting of text, images, and computer code to enable dynamic interactions with the web page. If it takes a long time for the data to travel between the web server and my computer, the browsing will be slow and my experience of the Internet will be bad. Latency is one of the critical factors that influence the user experience. Depending on the use case, even milliseconds of delay can significantly impact the performance of applications, from simple web browsing to complex real-time interactions. Service providers are looking to offer the best possible user experience and it is therefore key that they also look into minimizing the latency in their networks.

The 5G Revolution and the Urgency of Low Latency

The advent of 5G technology promised to revolutionize connectivity, with new possibilities for industries and consumers alike. One of the key pillars of the 5G offering is Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), a technology designed to deliver extremely low latency and high reliability, making it ideal for applications like autonomous vehicles, remote surgery, and industrial automation. The target is to deliver data with a latency as low as 1 ms, a quite understandable requirement for the aforementioned applications.

To realize the full potential of 5G URLLC, service providers must prioritize latency management. Visibility into the latency of the network is a must, bundled with intelligent tools to automate the detection of issues and root-cause analysis. The protocol of choice for latency measurements is TWAMP, a protocol that was standardized more than 15 years ago. In today’s network, a TWAMP monitoring solution offers a powerful system to accurately measure, monitor, and optimize network latency, ensuring that service providers can deliver the low-latency performance required by the critical applications running on top of 5G and other data networks.

Most of the devices used in today’s critical data networks have inbuilt capabilities to reflect TWAMP packets and you therefore only need to deploy a few central TWAMP probes that initiate TWAMP test packets towards all the devices in the network. The TWAMP reflector in the devices reflects the packets back to the probe, which then collects the results and reports them to a central system that further runs intelligent analytics and reports on the collected data. The central system will use the collected TWAMP data to report on latencies and other quality-related KPIs along with automatic notifications and reports on how the network is performing.

The Business Impact of Latency

The impact of latency extends beyond user experience. It can have a significant impact on businesses’ bottom line. Cloud providers, advertisers, and other service providers have understood the impact of latency and how much it can impact revenues. In many surveys operators and other OTT providers have indicated that latency has an important impact on their revenues. Some examples of studies that show what even a slight increase in latency can lead to:

• Reduced sales: Amazon discovered that every 100 millisecond of latency costs them 1% in sales.
• Decreased website traffic: Google found that a 0.5-second delay in search page generation time led to a 20% drop in traffic.
• Lost revenue opportunities: a broker could lose $4 million in revenues per millisecond if their electronic trading platform is 5 milliseconds behind the competition
• Microsoft found that a 1-second slowdown reduced queries by 1% and ad clicks by 1.5%. A 2-second slowdown reduced queries by 2.5% and ads by 4.4%

While these surveys were conducted over a decade ago, their findings remain highly relevant. In fact, the potential financial impact of latency is likely far more significant today. These studies underscore the critical role of low latency in maintaining user satisfaction, driving conversions, and ultimately boosting revenue.

The Creanord PULSure Solution: A Game-Changer for Latency Management

Creanord is driven to build technologies and solutions that actively and accurately track network performance and turn data into outperforming networks. Creanord designs and delivers network performance and quality monitoring solutions that build better confidence and readiness for service providers to create and sell services. Service providers can ensure that they are meeting the SLAs, delivering against what is promised 24/7, and satisfying customers who have no tolerance for poor performance quality.

Creanord has had a special focus on latency measurements, reporting, and management for many years and is one of the market leaders in these applications. The Creanord TWAMP solution interoperates with all the major infrastructure vendors in the market and includes the following key capabilities:

• Deployment of affordable network-wide latency management in an effortless, fast, and scalable manner. Record deployment time: half a day in a network with 5000 base stations.
• TWAMP solution for 5G, 6G, and beyond with microsecond-level latency measurement accuracy through hardware timestamping
• Superior visibility of the performance and network latency in network segments with a segmented view
• Support for accurate one-way and two-way latency measurements
• Cost-efficient scalability from small to very large networks

The Creanord PULSure solution has been deployed in 50+ service provider networks for latency management.