When That Call Comes...

A holiday, 1.20 pm that quiet afternoon and it’s silence shattered by the louder than usual ring of the mobile phone. A Customer in distress at the other end. Not the first time. And I know we are privileged and honoured to receive such a call, and the trust that goes with it. But this time being a holiday, something must be terribly wrong. 

We are asked to help collect, collate and provide insights based on network data related to a repeated DNS issue.  Account team gets into action. By 4 pm, resources are mobilised and we are ready for ground warfare – equipment, resources and enthusiam that drive a sense of servitude and curiosity. Curiosity to troubleshoot and find the problem and enable the Customer when the pain is at it’s peak.

Plan in place, and a frenzied operation underway, which included site clearance, logistics, site access and installation.

By 8pm our expert resource reached a remote site to unplug a test equipment, and then reached another site around 40 kms away. Team works thru the night to get the system ready for the next attack on the network.  A DDoS attack.

The following day 3.45 pm , the DOS attack happens. Close to 50% of traffic is impacted. That’s huge in proportion. That’s enormous. We collect all the data , analyse it jointly with our collaborative Customer and soon identify the source of the DDoS attack from “ xxxx.net” site.  DNS & CPU utilization of the server normalized, with latency improved by over 50% during the outage periods. This was a great team effort, mobilising our expert resources in a short time. The site that trigerred the DDoS attack is blocked and normalcy returns.

The problem had been building up over the last couple months. Queries going towards the DNS server had high latency during certain hours but there was no visibility. Broadband subscriber customer experience was suffering and a steep rise in number of customer complaints, reporting slow web response. It required visibility of traffic to identify the problem. Eventually this reached a peak with visibility upto the CEO, which is when we were called in.

A Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attack happens fast and furious, usually targetting a service from many sources to slow it down and bring it down. This is malicious and a drain on network resources and loss of revenue before it becomes very visible.

Viavi is proud to provide our best in class Test & Measurement solutions for network installation, operations and management. Not only that, but where we extend that experience is in our eagerness to get that call , that call during the need of the hour, collaborate with Customer personnel and solve the pain point . We enable our instruments & monitoring solutions and the associated network with our highly skilled experts who can test and work with you to diagnose the problem. Diagnose the problem very quickly. How important is it to monitor a data network of today ? Today, more than ever given it's susceptibility to attacks while it carries sensitive content.

We are honored this opportunity came our way, having earned our right to get that call to serve. Serve and play a part in improving the quality of communications and the life of several millions of subscribers – people like you and me, on a holiday.