Reduce Network Congestion and Support Calls
In November last year, Netflix ran into a bit of a PR disaster when its live stream of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing event dissolved into a buffering and glitch-filled debacle that drew more than 100,000 reports of network issues from frustrated users on the Downdetector website alone. Support teams at regional ISPs across North America no doubt also felt the wrath of annoyed subscribers trying unsuccessfully to access the fight.
With Fox announcing that this year’s Big NFL Championship Game will be available for free on the Tubi streaming platform (the game is also available for streaming on multiple platforms in Canada), many local and regional ISPs may be bracing for an even larger avalanche of complaints from subscribers trying to watch online.
Here’s the good news—Preseem can help regional ISPs proactively intercept network congestion issues and avoid being snowed under by support calls on Game Day (or during any other mass online streaming event). Let’s take a look at how you can blitz congestion and avoid fumbling the big game stream while scoring a touchdown with your customers 🏈
What is Network Congestion?
First, we should clarify what we mean when we talk about network congestion. For fixed wireless and fiber providers, network congestion refers to when the subscriber’s quality of experience (QoE) is negatively impacted by high latency caused by saturated links and poor queue management.
This can be caused by subscriber “self-congestion,” i.e. when a customer is maxing out their plan. An example of this would be when someone is streaming the game on TV, while other household members are playing a video game online or bingeing their favorite show on Netflix.
The reason that the customer experience degrades rapidly as links approach congestion is that most devices employ simple “first-in, first-out” (FIFO) buffering schemes—these add latency and eventually cause packet loss across all flows.
A congested network might also be the result of hardware issues, such as overloaded access points. In fact, we’ve found that APs are the most common congestion points in any fixed wireless network. An added complexity for operators trying to troubleshoot underperforming APs is that different models will behave differently under load, requiring specialized knowledge and additional time to diagnose and fix the issue.
Reduce Network Congestion Proactively
That’s where Preseem has you covered like a tough-nosed offensive line 💪 Our Automatic AP Capacity Management feature automatically eases latency problems on overloaded access points so that you’ll continue providing your subscribers with a great experience even when the network is at its busiest (say, during a certain big football game). This also saves time and removes manual work for busy network managers.
Delivering a consistently good subscriber experience also requires actively managing network congestion, however. The first step is proactively managing the network’s capacity to meet subscriber demands.
Unlike reactive approaches from alternative platforms that require AP rates to be manually configured and don’t scale due to dynamically changing RF and subscriber behaviors, Preseem’s Access Point and CPE Radio scores greatly simplify this task, require little RF expertise, and work across different manufacturers.
Best of all, our Access Point Capacity Management capability is vendor- and application-neutral. No artificial limits on specific applications are required, and fair bandwidth allocation between subscribers on an Access Point is achieved in real-time.
Learn How to Proactively Tackle Network Issues
Solve Self-Congestion Issues and Get Fewer Calls
As mentioned above, congestion within a subscriber’s plan rate (or self-congestion) can also contribute to a poor quality of experience. The beauty of Preseem’s QoE Optimized Plan Enforcement is that it helps eliminate common support issues before they begin 🤯
One of the old ways to deal with this was by using complex Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems. These attempt to identify the application associated with individual network flows and packets to classify them for queue placement. Since internet applications are constantly changing, however, these approaches are highly resource- and labor-intensive, as they require frequent signature updates and maintenance of complex configurations.
Preseem’s QoE-optimized plan enforcement, on the other hand, is based on modern active queue management (AQM) techniques that keep latency and loss low, even when the link is near full capacity. This provides isolation between flows so that one flow can’t negatively impact another and by more intelligently managing the packets that do need to be queued.
This means the subscriber experience remains good, even when they’re maxing out their service plan. As a result, there will be fewer support calls for your team to deal with, and happier customers more likely to deliver referrals and positive online reviews.
How Preseem Helped JCWIFI Avoid a Game Day Meltdown
Of course, it’s not just network congestion that could cause a Big Game upset for streaming fans. The weather can also play a role, like last year when Preseem customer JCWIFI’s above-ground fiber was damaged by a tornado in the days before the game. Fortunately, the Preseem Team was able to help them fix the situation before it started affecting customers.
Based in Freeport, Illinois, JCWIFI is the region’s largest locally owned internet service provider. It provides dependable, high-speed internet to subscribers across 5,000 square miles in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
JCWIFI has been using Preseem for two years and has deployed our 5000 and 20000 series of appliances on their network. As JCWIFI’s Division Manager Scott Piehn explains in the video below, they recently saw a tornado rip out two miles of above-ground fiber on one of their two 10GB pipes, right before the championship game 😡
With a surge of usage on the way and half their capacity down, Scott contacted Preseem to see if we could queue his upstream bandwidth to avoid service interruptions and multiple angry calls from customers during the big game. As Scott shared, within 20 minutes Preseem’s support team had a script at the ready to ensure buffer-free streaming and happy subscribers.
“We lost half of our capacity. We were oversubscribed by 50% on Super Bowl Sunday, and our company did not get slammed on Facebook. Everybody—their Super Bowl streamed, no pauses, no stops. We made it through Super Bowl Sunday, and the vast majority of my customers have no concept that we were oversubscribed by 50%. Once fiber came back up, we disabled the patch, and I am super, super happy. Preseem bailed me out.”
Watch the full video below.
Network congestion got you feeling like it’s 4th and 1? Want to ensure your subscribers have a great experience even during the busiest days of the year? Put the success of your network play-calling in the hands of the proactive approach. Schedule a demo with us, and we can get you started quickly with a free 30-day trial.
Note: This article contains edited passages from these previously published blogs: Manage Network Congestion Not Applications, Benefits of Centralized Plan Enforcement for ISPs, and Preseem Customer Testimonials. Check them out for an even deeper dive on network congestion, and how Preseem helps regional ISPs reduce churn and support calls while ensuring a positive subscriber experience.
