DOCOMO & Fujitsu Develop Counter-Failure Technologies for IP Networks

— Expected to Support Coming Launch of High-Speed LTE Services —

TOKYO, JAPAN --- NTT DOCOMO, INC. and Fujitsu Limited announced their development of two technologies to detect and locate "silent failures" in IP networks much faster and more accurately than currently possible (see diagrams below).

The new technologies will enable DOCOMO to significantly shorten the time required to recover from silent failures, which will support the eventual launch of extra-high-speed LTE services over DOCOMO's emerging IP-based mobile network.

A silent failure occurs when a router in an IP network fails and data transmission is halted without the network administrator being notified, since routers cannot detect internal failures. Network operators can install dedicated monitoring devices that detect silent failures, but only by continually transmitting test data throughout the entire network and then analyzing the test results, making the process time-consuming.

One of the two new technologies analyzes data on not only test transmissions but also loss rates and network delays, which facilitates faster detection of silent failures. It can also detect warning signs of silent failures that are possibly about to occur.

The second technology identifies the location of silent failures in an efficient manner by analyzing data only from routes over which data is actually being transmitted. In trials conducted on DOCOMO's existing FOMA™ 3G network, the technology identified failure locations by up to 80 percent faster than the conventional method. This technology also enhances conventional network-monitoring systems by analyzing failure and operational data in combination, which improves the accuracy of failure location and enables ordinary and silent failures to be separately identified.