Introduction

Service monitoring and troubleshooting issues is one of the key roles of a Network Operations Center (NOC) team. Quickly being able to consult key metrics of the service at any given moment in time, having flexible and meaningful alerting on top of it as well as clear resolution recipes are common requirements to modern systems on which NOC engineers rely, but the reality for most is that it has become a management complexity problem where there is little unification of systems to enable the NOC teams have real control and in-depth and timely problem-solving capabilities.   

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Common issues in Wifi Network monitoring and troubleshooting of a multi-vendor based service

It is no surprise for anyone who manages provider’s networks that there is an array of different platforms from different vendors. As a result the NOC personnel have to deal with:

• complex network management due to differences in management tools and interfaces
• integration challenges: specific vendor API implementation, different supported protocols
• fragmented visibility: separate dashboards, custom views
• challenges of having unified monitoring: different metrics reported via different protocols and interfaces, difficulties in aligning alerts for similar conditions, impossible to correlate events issues by different system
• resource management issues: need to allocate the right engineers to deal with specific issues, skills gaps, complex on-call schedules
• hidden costs in training, integration, troubleshooting and resolution times

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For all of these reasons, Service Providers are now looking for a one-stop-shop solution for the NOC that will simplify the operation of their networks, massively reduce TCO and dramatically improve the end customers' experience.

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Waylay’s approach to Wi-Fi QoS monitoring Automation

Step 1 : Streamline Data Normalisation Across Multiple Vendors

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One of the primary challenges in managing a multi-vendor network environment is the inconsistency in how data is represented across different platforms. By deploying Waylay-built standardized templates, data normalization becomes effortlessly seamless. The Service providers gain immediately as their existing vendor platforms are transformed into an automatic plug-and-play environment, where known devices are effortlessly recognised and integrated into the system. Also when the Service Providers want to add new vendors, onboarding becomes quick and efficient by extending existing standardized templates which significantly reduces the time to deploy the service.

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The overall approach waylay facilitates, allows the NOC to shift its focus toward the network’s critical nodes, enabling a more proactive and insightful management strategy. The entire network can be dynamically rediscovered periodically to ensure every node is consistently monitored. A drill-down perspective—from high-level devices like a Cisco MX84 appliance to granular customer premises equipment—can be visualized through an intuitive dashboard. By creating virtual nodes and utilizing netJSON format, the system represents network devices and their relationships uniformly, regardless of the vendor involved.

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Step 2: Unified Network Visualisation and Health Monitoring

Once the network is mapped, each node can be analyzed in depth, capturing key monitoring data related to its performance and the health of its neighboring nodes. This information creates a web of interlinked health metrics, enabling operators to identify and respond to issues with precision. For instance, links that consistently exceed traffic thresholds or show no activity can trigger alerts, allowing operators to take timely corrective action.

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For wireless devices, the system provides detailed data aggregation, offering visibility into traffic per SSID client or across multiple networks within an organization. One critical metric that operators monitor is Wi-Fi channel utilization. The platform tracks and stores data over time, flagging channels for intervention when utilization remains high for extended periods. During root-cause analysis, NOC engineers can dive deeper into connectivity events, which are logged in an easily accessible format. Combined with historical signal quality data, these insights enable the identification of problematic devices and streamline troubleshooting.

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Step 1+2: Provide a New Holistic Approach to Network Management

This comprehensive, client-agnostic approach to network management ensures that all nodes, regardless of vendor or device type, are represented uniformly within the system. By automatically onboarding new vendors, dynamically rediscovering the network, and applying consistent data models, NOC teams gain a powerful, centralized platform. This solution not only reduces operational complexity but also delivers real-time, actionable insights that drive more effective decision-making.

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Step 3: Streamline troubleshooting by adding Waylay GenAI

To reduce the complexity of managing networks (and consign alarm floods and the duplicate alarm phenomena to history) Waylay's solution for automating managed WiFi networks has deployed a GenAI based feature set. Namely, the Waylay GenAI Rules explainer now provides all the necessary insights on each discrete networking event. The solution leverages large language models (LLMs) Rules explainer which communicates with the NOC engineer through a waylay natural language application. The GenAI explainer automatically does all the alarm - network entity - rule execution correlations in the background, so only the “critical-action required” events are presented in the NOC Teams Dashboard and frees the engineer from doing troubleshooting work on a “one by one” event resolution basis.

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The Waylay solution combines, new automated real-time function information with existing knowledge repositories built up using Waylay low code pipelines derived from unstructured user documentation (such as device documentation or private knowledge databases) which allows the NOC Team to reduce troubleshooting and resolution times significantly, perhaps by as much as 5X.

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Having automated solution recommendations provided by the Waylay platform then also allows the Service Provider to onboard new personnel quicker with less expertise required, reduces the time required for solving networking incidents and keeps the NOC team focused on improving service operations rather than running the OPS in a constant fire-fighting mode.

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Conclusion

Using the new capabilities of the Waylay Platform Service Provider can deploy the new solution incredibly fast, avoid large software integration projects and most importantly abstract an array of specific network management solutions in one pane of glass providing their NOC teams with a unified view across heterogeneous networks.

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A Waylay-based approach allows Service Providers to:

• Reduce the complexity of operating an ecosystem of network management systems
• Remove steep learning curves for new NOC team members,
• Simplify on-call schedule management and improve the overall efficiency of the NOC team and
• Streamline the volume of alarms down to a viable - credible set of events to act upon. 

When all the characteristics of the Waylay solution are grossed up TCO of software/systems will be reduced materially, the productivity of the NOC Team will improve by up to 5X and end Customer satisfaction rates will improve significantly.

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Thank you.

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P.s. If you would to see a live demonstration of Waylay or understanding the material productivity gains from our approach please drop me a note @ info@waylay.io.

For the super techies that want to dive even deeper into what we do with live production customers today, you can visit Waylay Labs @ https://waylay.ai/