Introduction

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience Introduction

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience is a component of the Crosswork Assurance solution. It operates at the network layer and analyzes real user data flows in real time to provide highly actionable insights and control.

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience is designed to help service providers improve end-user experience while reducing operating cost. It does this through three main capabilities:

1. Network Intelligence – detailed flow-level visibility and experience scoring.
2. Network Optimization – intelligent shaping/time-shifting of large (elephant) flows during congestion.
3. Energy Reduction – data-driven recommendations to de-energize/re-energize RAN resources while preserving user experience.

What Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience Does

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience continuously processes mirrored user and control-plane traffic (for example from TAP/SPAN) and converts packet-level observations into compact, high-value flow intelligence.

It correlates:

• user flow behavior,
• protocol and application patterns,
• control signaling (for IP-to-cell mapping), and
• network context (cell/site/location, transport metrics, telemetry, third-party data).

The result is a near real-time view of user experience quality per flow, per subscriber, per application, and per cell/site.

Core Functions

1) Network Intelligence

• Monitors and characterizes traffic across protocols such as QUIC, TCP, UDP, GTP, MPLS/SR/SRv6.
• Produces per-flow and per-endpoint metrics for troubleshooting and trend analysis.
• Computes a proprietary Consumer Experience Score (CX Score) on a 1–5 scale.
• Correlates user experience with network underlay metrics (for example TWAMP and telemetry) to localize likely issue domains faster.
• Streams enriched metrics into analytics systems and data lakes to support dashboards, alerting, and closed-loop automation.

2) Network Optimization

• Detects elephant flows and applies dynamic shaping/micro-shifting to reduce contention during congestion windows.
• Preserves experience for latency-sensitive or real-time traffic (for example conferencing and collaboration) while managing heavy bandwidth sessions.
• Improves overall user throughput in congested conditions and can reduce pressure for immediate spectrum/capacity expansion.

3) Energy Reduction

• Uses flow-based and cell-level behavior to identify where spectrum/cell resources can be safely de-energized.
• Sends standards-based API recommendations to RAN controllers.
• Continuously monitors CX and supports re-energization as load rises (spectrum on demand).
• Targets meaningful OPEX and sustainability improvements while maintaining acceptable user experience.

Key Metrics and Analytics

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience tracks a rich CX-oriented metric set, including:

• speed test (passive, flow-based),
• burst throughput,
• interburst gap,
• flow burst duration,
• TCP RTT,
• retransmission percentage,
• time to 500 KB,
• sufficient throughput,
• simultaneous active users,
• congestion ratio,
• consumer experience score.

These metrics are usable at both detailed and aggregated levels, enabling:

• deep root-cause analysis (per flow/subscriber), and
• fast operational visibility (per cell/site at interval-based granularity).

Deployment and Integration Overview

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience supports flexible deployment options:

• Router/container-based deployment (for supported platforms, currently the NCS 540 families).
• x86/server-based deployment for higher traffic capacities (up to 320Gbps).
• Out-of-line operation via mirrored traffic sources is supported for non-invasive monitoring.

Typical deployed components include:

• traffic processor - listening on the network layer,
• management server - control point for the traffic processors,
• collector/streaming layer - feeding the data to the Crosswork Assurance platform (Network Intelligence),
• Crosswork Assurance analytics and visualization platform (on-prem, cloud, or hybrid depending on solution setup).

Benefits for Service Providers

Experience and Service Quality

• Better understanding of what users actually experience (not only averaged RAN KPIs).
• Faster detection of degradations and clearer separation of service vs transport issues.
• Improved ability to protect quality during traffic spikes and congestion.

Operational Efficiency

• Real-time, actionable insights for engineering and operations teams.
• Better prioritization of optimization actions using objective CX evidence.
• Reduced need for costly/manual speed testing campaigns.

Capacity and Cost

• More efficient use of existing spectrum and infrastructure.
• Lower probability of premature capacity upgrades.
• Potential OPEX savings through energy-aware RAN control.

Sustainability

• Supports energy reduction strategies with measured impact and feedback loops.
• Helps align network operations with broader sustainability targets.

Why Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience Is Different

• Combines passive user-flow analytics with assurance and network context correlation.
• Focuses on real user traffic at scale, rather than sparse probe-only measurements.
• Links user experience outcomes directly to optimization and energy-control workflows.
• Designed for multi-vendor, multi-domain operational environments.

Summary

Cisco® Crosswork Assurance User Experience gives service providers a practical path to improve user experience and operational outcomes at the same time. By converting raw flow activity into CX-aware intelligence and control recommendations, it helps teams make better decisions about performance, congestion, capacity, and energy—continuously and at scale.