Introduction to PCMD

PCMD is a real-time diagnostics and troubleshooting tool that provides call-session and connection records for information such as duration, quality, disposition, and other important events that occur during the session, such as setup, failure, handover, and termination.

PCMD is used to evaluate the UE and the network node performance. For example, a call-flow procedure failure for the majority of UEs from a specific vendor can quickly reveal the root cause of a problem at the UE level.

When used for a specific scenario, PCMD provides the ability to find the root cause of a problem because of non-compliance in the network nodes. PCMD helps determine failure scenarios using end-to-end network-wide per-call measurements from multiple nodes. The end-to-end session data from the live network helps pinpoint the root causes of failures and facilitates quick responses, without recreating the scenarios in a lab environment.

PCMD data is generated on the MAG-c control plane (CP) and sent to a data collector node over a UDP stream. The call‑data streaming enables performance and root-cause analysis of real-time network issues.

The MAG-c supports PCMD in the following networks:

• on the CP, in a 4G-CUPS network
• on the SMF, in a 5G network

The MAG-c PCMD features include:

• performance and fault management, real-time monitoring, and off-line troubleshooting
• detailed call-processing view per procedure and per session
• detailed information about all activities of every user
• optionally enabled by the user using CLI configuration
• data source:
  • external messages
  • session state
  • internal processing logic
  • data digested and enriched with application logic, unlike sniffer tools that operate agnostic of application logic and rely on packet-capture only
• live streaming of PCMD session records
• PCMD stream realized as a UDP stream of PCMD records (one PCMD IP/UDP packet may contain 1 to 11 or more PCMD records) in proprietary binary format

• support for FWA control plane functions only (SMF and GW-C)

The MAG-c supports CLI commands to configure streaming of PCMD records. MAG-c supports PCMD record streaming to the provisioned real-time port when the record is created.

See PCMD record format and Generating and transmitting PCMD records for more information about PCMD records.