Kentik introduced Kentik True Origin, a product suite to support broadband and mobile providers with critical network visibility needs.

Housed within Kentik’s SaaS-based network analytics platform, Kentik True Origin enables ISPs, MSOs, mobile, telcos, and other providers to gain and fast, actionable insights into cost, competition, and subscriber behavior.

“Using telemetry data from network equipment that providers already have in place, operators can move away from traditional approaches like DPI, monitoring appliances, and data lakes, which do not scale or provide real-time visibility,” said Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik. “With True Origin, providers gain a deep, detailed picture of traffic associated with CDNs, OTT services, and subscriber behaviors. Having that level of insight allows providers to better grow revenue and manage cost, competition, and subscriber behavior.”

Kentik True Origin supports providers with three critical functionalities:

- CDN tracking to optimize traffic delivery for reliable performance ー CDNs deliver traffic from an ever-changing mix of infrastructure (e.g., their own ASNs, caches in other networks, and caches co-located inside their own networks). It was previously impossible for providers to get a unified view of all the traffic from each CDN. Kentik True Origin inspects DNS logs to tag network traffic with CDN labels in real time. Providers use this capability to drive negotiation with CDN operators, using hard data, rather than relying on intuition or guesswork. Kentik True Origin also helps providers find and fix CDN traffic origin misconfigurations to improve performance for subscribers.

- OTT service analytics to understand drivers of traffic growth + grow revenue and competitiveness ー On its own, network data isn’t very useful to business owners. Providers want to understand OTT traffic attributes like service names, provider names, and traffic types (video, audio, application, etc.) — not IP addresses, ports, and protocols. Kentik True Origin merges traffic details with DNS data, as well as Kentik’s in-house map of providers and services, to label traffic with meaningful OTT context in real time. Providers use OTT analytics to see the real drivers of traffic growth and optimize their offerings to maximize the revenue of in-house service offerings.

- Subscriber ID to improve customer service and stop policy abuse ー Network traffic alone doesn’t uniquely identify subscribers. Subscriber-to-IP associations change frequently. With Kentik True Origin, providers can merge traffic data with real-time authentication logs (like RADIUS or DHCP) to tag each traffic record with a unique subscriber ID. This helps to improve customer service efficiency and outcomes by enabling Kentik Detect to proactively notify providers of service issues, network abuse, or application usage impacting customer experience.

“Network traffic intelligence provides key insights that service providers need to plan and grow their networks — and their businesses,” added Freedman. “With True Origin, Kentik enables operators to fully understand how CDNs, OTT services, and subscriber behavior affect cost, revenue, and the network as a whole, and use that knowledge to drive business growth.”

Kentik True Origin will be generally available in April 2019 and included in the Kentik Premium plan.