You Can’t Control What You Can’t See
Application Awareness
In modern IP networks, protocol-level visibility is no longer enough. With the rise of encrypted traffic, evasive applications, and dynamically shifting service behaviors, telecom operators and national security stakeholders require deeper awareness. This requires mapping raw flows to actual applications, platforms, and service categories - not just to IPs and ports.
What Is Application Awareness?
Application Awareness refers to the system’s ability to detect, classify, and monitor traffic based on the actual application in use. Not just unreliable indicators like port numbers or protocols:
• Recognizing Netflix vs. generic HTTPS
• Differentiating Zoom calls from WebRTC
• Identifying Telegram vs. generic TLS-based messaging
• Specific browsers use tagging DNS over HTTPS (DoH)
This level of insight is essential for these applications:
• Traffic engineering & QoS enforcement
• Bandwidth management per service
• Subscriber behavior profiling
• Threat detection & anomaly identification
• Regulatory or content-based filtering
Classify with Confidence • Control with Intelligence
Quant Azimuth combines signature-based DPI, behavioral analysis, and domain correlation to classify traffic in real time. The Application Awareness Engine is designed to:
• Detect and classify thousands of services and applications
• Operate at line speed, including in high-throughput, encrypted environments
• Update continuously via research-driven signature libraries
• Correlate subscriber activity with application usage
• Feed other modules such as Traffic Classification, Heavy Traffic Policies, and Cyber Threats
Supported Categories Mapped to Applications
Streaming Media
Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, Spotify
Messaging & Chat
WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Messenger
VoIP & Video Calls
Zoom, Skype, Viber, Google Meet
Gaming
Fortnite, PUBG, Steam, Xbox Live
Cloud Services
Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive
DNS & Encrypted DNS
Standard DNS, DoH, DoT
VPN & Proxy
OpenVPN, WireGuard, Tor, Psiphon
Malicious
Suspicious encrypted tunnels
Unknown Category
Unclassified traffic patterns
Operational Advantages
Application Awareness provides real-time data that helps optimize network design by supporting strategic planning around service usage trends, heavy applications, and location-based performance:
• Smarter traffic shaping & congestion management
• More granular subscriber analytics
• Faster threat detection (e.g., tunneling via gaming or messaging apps)
• Enforcement of content filtering by app category
• Regulatory compliance for protected services or blocked content
Awareness Is the Foundation of Control
At Quant Azimuth, better insights lead to better control. Our Application Awareness capability ensures that network operators and public stakeholders move beyond protocol-based assumptions - toward a fundamental understanding of how their networks are being used.
