In today’s complex service provider networks, maintaining full visibility into subscriber behaviour and traffic flows is a fundamental challenge, especially when dealing with multiple broadband network gateways (BNGs) distributed across various regions.

For network administrators tasked with managing this infrastructure, Iris Network Systems emerges as a powerful tool for tracking subscriber traffic usage and monitoring performance in a distributed architecture.

One of Iris’s core strengths lies in its ability to correlate and monitor subscriber traffic across multiple BNGs. As subscriber sessions are terminated and managed at different BNGs based on geography, load or failover conditions, Iris ensures that traffic data is captured and unified across all touchpoints.

This capability is essential for:

Ensuring accurate accounting and billing regardless of the BNG entry point;
Enhancing subscriber mobility and session continuity; and
Proactively managing capacity by understanding load distribution across BNGs.

With Iris, you gain a centralised view of subscriber activity even in a distributed deployment, making it easier to manage complex routing and service delivery policies.

Granular and aggregate subscriber-count tracking

Iris provides exceptional flexibility in tracking subscriber counts, whether you’re monitoring on a per-subscriber basis or aggregating by customer or regional group. This includes:

Individual subscriber tracking for troubleshooting or detailed usage analytics;
Customer-based aggregation (data stacking), useful for enterprise SLA reporting and service tier analysis; and
Region-based aggregation (data stacking) that allows operators to identify growth trends, manage bandwidth availability and plan for expansion.

This multi-layered visibility empowers both network operations centre teams and business units to extract value from network data without the need for disjointed toolsets or manual correlation.

Real-time intelligence for smarter network operations

Beyond historical analytics, Iris offers real-time insight into traffic usage per BNG. It supports alerts and dashboards that highlight anomalies, such as congestion on specific BNGs, sudden subscriber surges or usage patterns that deviate from the norm.

With this live intelligence, operators can take proactive measures – like rerouting traffic, initiating mitigation protocols or scaling resources – to ensure optimal subscriber experience and operational continuity.

Conclusion

As networks grow in complexity and scale, managing subscriber activity across multiple BNGs demands a unified, intelligent approach. Iris delivers that solution, offering granular-to-aggregated visibility into traffic and subscriber counts, whether by BNG, customer or region. For service providers that prioritise scalability, performance and customer satisfaction, Iris is not just a monitoring tool – it’s a strategic asset.

About Iris Network Systems
At Iris Network Systems, our passion lies in monitoring. With a collective experience of more than 50 years in the telco/operator/ISP landscape, we hold a unique position to develop a scalable, real-time monitoring system.

Iris offers a flexible monitoring solution delivered through the cloud, on-premises or hybrid setup, catering to businesses of all sizes. By capturing millions of data points (KPIs) per minute, our system provides real-time alerting, reporting and troubleshooting capabilities, ensuring maximum visibility of our customers’ network and server infrastructure.

Operating across nine African countries, Iris Network Systems possesses a focused African perspective and footprint, making us a trusted name in the industry. Our multi-vendor approach empowers our customers with a single unified view of their entire infrastructure through a centralised portal, aligning with the diverse African tech landscape. Iris also serves customers in the US, United Arab Emirates and Australia.