Evolution of Application Visibility for Telcos: From Programmable Switches to Cloud Native

Explore the evolution of application visibility for telecommunications companies in this 26-minute conference talk. Discover how the growth of complex applications like gaming, conferencing, streaming, and metaverse/VR has made visibility into application behavior and customer experience at scale essential for telcos. Learn about the limitations of traditional appliances (DPI) and the journey towards building terabit-scale application insights for telco networks. Examine the combination of fast packet processing with machine learning models, and follow the progression from programmable networks (P4 SDN) to virtualized functions (VNFs) and cloud-native (CNFs) using eBPF technology. Gain insights into the pros and cons of different approaches in terms of scale and affordability, and understand how these solutions fit into evolving cloud-native network architectures for 5G, Fixed, and Cable networks.