A Comment on PCRF - Policy management - PCEF - DPI

 

A comment was made to one of my "PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix" (here), by John, as follows:

"A PCRF is not same a Policy Manager or Policy Controller. PCRF must comply to 3GPP specs and support Rx and Gx reference points which maybe of 3-4 of the listed "PCRF" supports. In addition, although a PCEF may contain a DPI, a DPI is not a PCEF and none of DPI you mentioned can act as PCEF and communicate with a PCRF, they all have proprietary APIs and do not support Gx reference point."

Thanks John - and I agree with most of your statements. Indeed PCRF is not a fancy name for a policy server, but is defined by 3GPP and has to conform to its specs and standards. In fact, in one of the first post I wrote (here): 

".. due to demand of MNOs to implement standards-based solutions, I am trying to isolate and present only "PCRF-DPI" solutions which are based on 3GPP standards (Gx, Gy, Gz and Gr). However, it might not be the case for all interoperability statements presented in the table, and it is very likely that some of the integration efforts were/are based on proprietary interfaces "

Nevertheless:
 

• A significant number of the policy vendors in my list claim to have a 3GPP compliant "PCRF" product - you may browse the links in the matrix and see these statements.
    
• Some of the DPI products are 3GPP compliant - see for example:
   
• Sandvine-Bridgewater release says: "The testing included the PCRF Gx and Gy usage metering interfaces for 3GPP-compliant Policy Control Enforcement Points"
    
• Allot-Broadhop - "The combined offering, based on the latest 3GPP® release 9 policy enforcement standards for mobile networks"