[Cisco Acquired] Intucell CEO Speaks about SON Opportunity

 
Rani Wellingstein, CEO, Intucell, spoke today at the 4GIsrael conference. A week ago Cisco announced its intention to acquire Intucell for $475M (here) and this was an opportunity for me to hear why.

Rani said that Intucell has 12 deployments, in which the $55M AT&T (here) was the 2nd. Pelephone, Israel, was the first.

At AT&T they are now deployed across the continental US, and were able, with their Self Optimized Networks (SON) technology, to reduce by 40% the number of congested cells during business hours, and to increased the network throughput by 10%.

SON is becoming the "Operating System of the for the RAN" (Radio Access Network) - consolidating all control, over macro, small and Wi-Fi cells in one system - the same way the billing system has to consolidate all subscriber information in one place.

As such, it provides an opportunity to smaller vendors to deliver cell solutions to large MNOs, and for the MNOs to spread their budget, as all multi-technology, multi-vendor cells are merged under one control system.

Qwilt Adds 5 Transparent Caching Customers

  

Qwilt (see "Qwilt Unveils Transparent-video Delivery Solution" - here) announced that it has "..signed deals with five new customers in key strategic regions including North America, Latin America, and Asia in the first month of 2013. The company is experiencing an unprecedented surge in demand for its transparent caching and video delivery solutions due to the rapidly increasing consumption of streaming over-the-top (OTT) video, and the strain it is putting on operator networks worldwide".

Recently, Qwilt's CEO, Alon Maor, said he is expecting significant business in Japan and South Korea - see "Qwilt CEO Expects Full-Scale Deployments in Japan and Korea During 2013" - here and announced Conway, a  US cable operator as a customer (here).

See "Qwilt Sees Strong Growth, Increased Demand For Transparent Video Caching Solutions in 2013" - here.

Citrix Outlook for Bytemobile Business ($15M/Q4)

Citrix published its 2012 Q4 results showing total revenues of $740M (here). During the earning call, there were some references to the recently acquired Bytemobile business, by Mark B. Templeton (pictured), CEO:

"The final piece of our cloud networking strategy is Bytemobile, which extends our reach into the mobile carrier network for the first time. Q4 was our first full quarter selling Bytemobile, and I'm extremely pleased with the results. This market is still very new for us, but we are encouraged by the early signs and excited about the additional market reach it gives us .. We're starting to see what I'll call a Bytemobile effect, okay? So we did about $20 million in this segment, with more than $15 million coming from Bytemobile products [see "Citrix Expects $15M Bytemobile Revenues in 4Q12" - here], as well as a pull-through related to NetScalers".

"As far as Byte, we had said last quarter that we'd expect it to contribute about $50 million in 2013 and will likely be ahead of that if we continue to see the success that we've had. But I think it will be somewhat uneven due to occasional large deals coming in, but certainly up and to the right. So we don't plan on breaking that out with a whole lot of granularity going forward simply because it is becoming more and more integrated with the broader NetScaler motion"

See also "About Mobile Video Optimization Market Size and Citrix" - here.

See "Citrix Systems Management Discusses Q4 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", By SeekingAlpha, here.

Akamai: Recent DNS Attacks of 23 Gbps; Lists Attacked TCP Ports

Akamai published its State of the Internet report for Q3, 2012. The security section provides some interesting information on the volume of DDoS attacks Akamai saw recently, during "Operation Ababil" and about the distribution of DDoS attacks per TCP ports:

• 'Denial-of-service attacks associated with “Operation Ababil” are targeting banks and financial institutions. Among those attacks targeting Akamai customers, Akamai observed up to 65 Gbps of total attack traffic, with nearly 23 Gbps of attack traffic targeting DNS servers". 

• As for other attacks - "As shown in [top] Figure 2 [the second chart shows the Q1 '12/Q4 '11  results] attack traffic concentration among the top 10 ports once again declined during the third quarter of 2012, with these ports responsible for 59% of observed attacks, down from 62% in the second quarter, and 77% in the first quarter. The percentage of attacks targeting Port 445 once again dropped quarter-over-quarter, though not quite as significantly as seen between the first and second quarters. Port 445 remained the most targeted port in eight of the top 10 countries". 

Celebrating 3 Years with a New Report: The BTM 2013 Deployments Directory

My Broadband Traffic Management Blog celebrates today its 3rd anniversary. I continue my tradition of offering special reports on January 30th - after the 2011 DPI CEOs panel (here - maybe it is time to compare the vision to reality) and the 2012 Survey (still available! - here), I am adding this year the "Broadband Traffic Management 2013 Deployments Directory".

The directory, in MS-Excel format, summarizes all DPI, policy management, optimization and other relevant broadband traffic management deployments by operators I covered during the 3 years.

Most were in the "XX Deployments [##]" type of posts, but some were in other posts, following vendors partnership announcements, public companies fillings/earning calls or other news.

Each of 430+ records shows the operator name, country, type (mobile/ISP..), vendor and system deployed. In some cases one item (operator or vendor) is not available - but I thought the information is important and informative enough to be included. I did my best to verify that each deployment appears only once.

The excel format allows processing the information in many ways; The directory is built as an excel table allowing sorting and filtering; 3 ready-made pivot tables show the information in operators, vendors and system views. The report is available for $495 through the "Buy Now" option on the right.

Vendors listed in the directory (I used the vendor name at time of announcement):

Acision, Acme Packet, AdaptiveMobile, Akamai Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, Alepo, Allot Communications, Altobridge, Amdocs, Anagran, Aptilo Networks, Arbor Networks, Arieso, Astellia, Birdstep Technology, Blue Coat Systems, Bridgewater Systems, BroadHop, BTI Systems, Bytemobile, Camiant, Checkpoint, Cisco, CommProve, Comptel, Comverse, Comviva, Connectem, ContentKeeper Technologies, DiViNetworks, EdgeCast, EliteCore, Ellacoya, Ericsson, F5, F5-Traffix, Flash Networks, Fortinet, FTS, Genband, Globitel, GreenPacket, HP, Huawei, InfoVista, Intucell, Ipanema Technologies, Juniper, Kindsight, Live Mobile, MDS Lavastorm Analytics, Mobixell Networks, Neuralitic, Nokia Siemens Networks, ntels, Openet, Openwave, Openwave, Openwave Mobility, Opetnet, Optenet, Orga Systems, Oversi, PeerApp, Phorm, Procera Networks, Qwilt, Radcom, Radware, Redknee, Riverbed, Sandvine, Starent, Symantec Corporation, Tango Telecom, Tekelec, Tellabs, Vantrix, Vedicis, Volubill, WeFI, Zhilabs and ZTE.

Diameter Signaling Router Product Page Updated

The Diameter Router Product page [here] was updated. Two vendors added to the table: 

• Elitecore Technologies with its ELITEDSC product
   
• Tango Telecom with the Diameter Signaling Controller product

 

Procera and Sandvine Win Middle-East DPI Deals

Both Procera Networks and Sandvine announced DPI wins in the Middle-East region:

• Procera said it has "secured a multi-million dollar initial order from a Tier 1 Middle Eastern converged Fixed line and Mobile network operator.. to replace competitor’s products .. The operator is experiencing significant traffic growth across both fixed and mobile networks, and selected Procera to provide growth capability in the network core".
  
  "The operator selected Procera’s PacketLogic PL10000 platform for the network deployment throughout its footprint. Procera expects to recognize the revenue from this initial order in the first half of 2013 .. This operator will also be utilizing Procera’s ContentLogic [here] product to perform content analytics and offer value-added services to their subscribers while offering Intelligent Charging services based on 3GPP standards .. The operator is also utilizing the Advanced Traffic Steering capabilities of the PL10000, steering specific subscriber and application traffic to value added service solutions".
  
  See "Procera Networks Deployed by Tier 1 Middle Eastern Converged Fixed/Mobile Operator" - here

• Sandvine announced it has "..received Network Policy Control orders from two mobile operators and one DSL service provider in .. Bahrain, Kuwait [sounds like Zain] and Oman .. All three customers are a part of multinational fixed and mobile operators; two are subsidiaries and one is a parent".
  
  See "Sandvine Strengthens Footprint In Middle East" - here.

ITU New Approved Video Codec will Save 50% Bitrate

The ITU has approved "A new video coding standard building on the PrimeTime Emmy award winning ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC .. The new standard, known informally as ‘High Efficiency Video Coding’ (HEVC) will need only half the bit rate of its predecessor,ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ (AVC), which currently accounts for over 80 per cent of all web video".

"HEVC will unleash a new phase of innovation in video production spanning the whole ICT spectrum, from mobile devices through to Ultra-High Definition TV .. ITU-T H.265 / ISO/IEC 23008-2 HEVC will provide a flexible, reliable and robust solution, future-proofed to support the next decade of video. The new standard is designed to take account of advancing screen resolutions and is expected to be phased in as high-end products and services outgrow the limits of current network and display technology".

"Companies including ATEME, Broadcom, Cyberlink, Ericsson [see "Ericsson to Launch New Video Encoder for Live TV over Mobile" - here], Fraunhofer HHI, Mitsubishi, NHK, NTT DOCOMO and Qualcomm have already showcased implementations of HEVC. The new standard includes a ‘Main’ profile that supports 8-bit 4:2:0 video, a ‘Main 10’ profile with 10-bit support, and a ‘Main Still Picture’ profile for still image coding that employs the same coding tools as a video ‘intra’ picture".

See "New video codec to ease pressure on global networks" - here.

Research: OpenDPI Performance; How many Packets Needed to Identify Applications?

 
New research by Jawad Khalife and Amjad Hajjar (pictured), Lebanese University/Faculty of Engineering, IT department, Beirut, Lebanon and Jesús Díaz-Verdejo, University of Granada/Department of Signal Processing, Telematics and Communication, Granada, Spain looks at the performance of OpenDPI (see also "nDPI Supports Skype, Whatsapp and Netflix" - here).

Abstract

The identification of the nature of the traffic flowing through a TCP/IP network is a relevant target for traffic engineering and security related tasks. Despite the privacy concerns it arises, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is one of the most successful current techniques. Nevertheless, the performance of DPI is strongly limited by computational issues related to the huge amount of data it needs to handle, both in terms of number of packets and the length of the packets. One way to reduce the computational overhead with identification techniques is to sample the traffic being monitored. This paper addresses the sensitivity of OpenDPI, one of the most powerful freely available DPI systems, with sampled network traffic. Two sampling techniques are applied and compared: the per-packet payload sampling, and the per-flow packet sampling. Based on the obtained results, some conclusions are drawn to show how far DPI methods could be optimised through traffic sampling.

One finding relates to the number of packet the classifier needs to see in order to correctly classify applications, which significantly affect the system performance:

 "The average packet detection number in the dataset is shown in Fig. 6  for most common protocols. Some protocols like iMESH and Bittorrent, show higher values than other protocols. We validated the fact that the presence of most deviation is due to flows that were under course during the start of the capture. Most protocols averages were below 10 packets .. As a result for per-flow sampling, studied in this section, inspecting the first 4 to 10 packets of a flow (as DPI input for inspection) could maintain the flow classification accuracy at high levels ranging from 90% to 99%. 

In choosing the appropriate value of Nmin 

for the 

classifier, two situations should be distinguished

according to the classification target:

If the target is to classify only one specific protocol, 

N

min could be easily specified according to Fig. 6 (e.g. for 

HTTP, Nmin=4). In this case, the classifier would inspect only the minimum number of packets, necessary for flow classification. However, if the target is to classify all protocols, which is the most common situation, Nmin should be assigned the maximum value of the average packet detection number (Nmin=10) in order to classify most protocols. In this case, and for protocols whose average packet detection number is lower than Nmin, the classifier would inspect more packets than necessary.
 
See "Performance of OpenDPI in Identifying Sampled Network Traffic" - here.

Procera: HTTP Needs Deeper DPI

   

Interesting post by Jon Linden (pictured), in conjunction with Procera Networks' recent announcement on URL DPI features (see "Procera Adds High Performance Web Content Categorization & Filtering" - here).

Jon says - "HTTP is not just a web protocol anymore .. the big difference came with smartphones using “apps”, where the majority of the apps use HTTP as a bearer ..  This means that HTTP today plays the same role as TCP .. plus the fact that HTTP generates the majority of the online traffic today .. For a DPI engine, HTTP is the easiest and the hardest protocol to detect. You can instantly see that it’s HTTP, but you have to look deep into the flow to ensure that it’s not an application that disguises its true identity, and to get the full flavour of what it really is"

See "HTTP, The New TCP" - here.

SkyFire's New Caching and other Features

Skyfire announced the launch of its ".. enhanced video and data optimization platform for operators - Rocket Optimizer 3.0. In this release .. Skyfire’s Rocket Optimizer, which already provides operators with a 60% boost in bandwidth capacity across smartphones, tablets and PCs, is announcing the addition of these new features in Rocket Optimizer 3.0: Measurement of bandwidth conditions in real time for every subscriber session .. CloudBurst Architecture that allows for instant expansion of optimization capacity to the carrier or public clouds, Enhanced optimization algorithms for the MP4 and H.264 video standards and CloudCache – a cloud-based caching solution that brings significant reductions in operator server, peering and IP transit costs"

To my question, Jay Hinman (pictured), Sr. Director, Marketing, Skyfire explained that "Our CloudCache solution we've announced is deliberately focused on video and large images only, in order to not only combat the largest bandwidth hog on networks (and largest disrupter of end-user experience), but also to reduce the number of deployed servers needed and to reduce CPU. We don't compete with general transparent caching solutions and instead seek to complement and improve upon them" (see chart below).

See "Skyfire delivers next-generation mobile video optimization with Rocket Optimizer 3.0" - here.

EU: Net Neutrality is about Transparency; Favor of Parental Control

 
Neelie KROES (pictured), VP of the European Commission, is a long time supporter of Net Neutrality (see "EU: 'It's not OK for Skype and other such services to be throttled'" - here).

In a recent post to her blog, she clarifies her position, and positions it around transparency, while allowing application-based tiered services:

  

"My general starting principle is that consumers should be free to make real choices about their internet subscription and online activity .. the public interest does not, in my view, preclude consumers from subscribing to more differentiated, limited internet offers, possibly for a lower price .. transparency and effective consumer control will nearly always be part of the solution"
  

".. On net neutrality, consumers need effective choice on the type of internet subscription they sign up to. That means real clarity, in non-technical language. About effective speeds in normal conditions, and about any restrictions imposed on traffic – and a realistic option to switch to a “full” service, without such restrictions, offered by their own provider or another. Ensuring consumer choice can mean constraints on others – in this case, an obligation for all internet service providers to offer an accessible “full” option to their customers. But such choice should also drive innovation and investment by internet providers, with benefits for all. I am preparing a Commission initiative to secure this effective consumer choice in Europe"

  

Ms Kroes also supports parental control service by ISPs - "Is there a public interest in parents having effective tools to control the material their young children can access online? Most would say yes, and the EU shares this view"

See "Internet and filtering applications: a tale of choice and revenues" - here.

iSuppli Reduces 2016 LTE Subscribers by 17%; Comparison Table Updated

   

iSupply updated its LTE subscribers stats - ".. LTE subscribers worldwide will reach 198.1 million in 2013, up a remarkable 115 percent from 92.3 million last year. Since being adopted in 2010 with just 612,000 users, the 4G next-generation wireless technology has grown by leaps and bounds, surging by an astounding factor of 22 to 13.2 million subscribers in 2011, and then jumping another 599 percent in 2012 to nearly 100 million subscribers. By 2016, LTE will claim more than 1.0 billion users, equivalent to a five-year compound annual growth rate of 139 percent"

The numbers for 2013 and 2016 are lower than those provided by iSuppli 6 months ago - see "[iSuppli] 1.2B(!) LTE Subscribers by 2016" - here and the two charts below:

"The bulk of growth during the last two years also came from smartphone upgrades, especially as 4G LTE technology hit top-of-mind for data-savvy consumers. This is because more than any other type of phone, smartphones are able to take further advantage of the faster data connectivity provided by LTE, which leverages the kind of low-latency, always-on mobile broadband service that consumers now demand".

The table below shows forecast from a number of analyst for the size of the LTE market:

Analyst	Date Published	LTE Connections 2012	Forecast	Post/ Release
iSupply	Jan 21, 2013	92.3M	1.0B / 2016	Here
Strategy Analytics	Jan 8, 2013	88M	1.6B / 2017	Here
ABI Research	Jan 4, 2013	103M	785M / 2017	Here
Infonetics Research	Dec  5, 2013	51M		Here
Global  Industry Analysts	Aug 31, 2012		1.46B  / 2018	Here
Pyramid Research	Aug 9, 2012		802M/ 2017	Here
Juniper Research	Nov 8,2011		428M / 2016	Here
Informa	Nov 8, 2011		613M / 2016	Here

See "4G LTE Users to Exceed A Hundred Million This Year" - here.

Zain Jordan CTO Lists Technologies Used to Ensure Capacity

Zain Jordan is usually open to testify about the technologies it uses. I've covered several already (monitoring /Astellia - here; Bill Shock Prevention/Globitel - here).

  

Zain's CTO, Yousef Abu Mutawe (pictured), provided recently additional insights into the type of solutions they use. In an interview to Broadband MEA 2013 Mr. Abu Mutawe was asked - "In areas of high demand high contention ratios can affect performance. What steps have you put in to ensure that you have enough capacity to deal with this?"

"Using compression tools for data is useful on the access part, while caching engines help save on international bandwidth. We also have policies in place to throttle the connection of customers that might be abusing the service". 

See "CTO, Zain: 'Data growth is the biggest challenge in today’s telecom market'” - here.

Napatech Looks Inside Mobile Tunnels (w/IPv6 Support)

Napatech announced " .. new tunneling protocol support that provides increased visibility for monitoring and management of mobile networks .. The new tunneling protocol support will perform flow identification and intelligent distribution based on the contents of tunnels rather than on the tunnel itself. Mobile subscriber traffic is transported in tunnels, such as GTP, through the core network. It is therefore important to monitor and analyze the contents of tunnels and base management decisions on this information .. Napatech will provide support for GPLS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) and IP-in-IP tunneling for both IPv4 and IPv6 networks .. The tunneling support features will be available in April 2013".

Erik Norup (pictured), President and CMO, Napatech said: “Our equipment vendor customers need to analyze all data on the mobile network to build a picture of what is happening .. IP-in-IP will become increasingly important as we make the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 .. There is therefore a need to transport IPv4 over IPv6 and vice versa. There will even be a need for IPv4 tunneling via IPv4 networks where only a limited number of IPv4 addresses are available. With our tunneling support we can ensure that the same picture is provided no matter the type of network you are using”.

See "Napatech Boosts Visibility in Mobile Networks" - here.

PCC Deployments [223]: KT [South Korea] Uses Tekelec for VoLTE

   

Tekelec announced that "South Korean mobile operator KT is deploying Tekelec’s market-leading Policy Server (PCRF) for its LTE and 3G networks. The Policy Server will support KT’s new Voice over LTE (VoLTE) offering, LTE data plans and Rich Communication Suite (RCS) service .. Tekelec’s Policy Server will support daily and monthly quota tracking for a variety of services, including voice, Internet usage, file transfer, instant messaging, and video telephony. The daily tracking will give KT new flexibility to offer per diem packages and service options across 3G, LTE and RCS services – a rarity in the industry".

This may be also related to the recent Korea Communications Commission decision to "let three local mobile operators, SK Telecom, KT and LG U+, charge users extra fees for VOIP applications or block their use entirely" (here).

".. The operator exceeded three million LTE subscribers in mid-November and four million by the end of 2012 [see chart below] .. The deal expands Tekelec’s policy footprint to a new country in the Asia-Pacific region. The company has additional customers in India, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore".

See "KT selects Tekelec’s market-leading policy server for LTE and 3G networks" - here.

Comviva and AdaptiveMobile Partner to Deliver Advanced Content Filtering

Comviva, announced that it has "engaged AdaptiveMobile .. to provide operators with the most comprehensive network-based web and message content filtering solution [see chart below] .. The web and message content filtering function will allow service providers to perform a complex assessment of the content of messages and data, looking for specific text combinations or even the content type (music and picture files)". 

"AdaptiveMobile’s content filtering techniques will add another element of control over spam to further manage unwanted messages and operators will have the most comprehensive solution for identifying and preventing fraudulent SMS/MMS and spam".

See "Comviva Partners with AdaptiveMobile to Bring Next Wave in Mobile Messaging" - here.

F5 CEO Reports on DPI Products; Availability not Provided

In November 2011, F5 announced its plans to introduce policy enforcement, Deep Packet Inspection products planned for release in 2013 (see "F5 Service Provider/Mobile Road Map: Focus on DPI" - here), after the intention to acquire Allot Communications for $500M (here) did not materialized. Allot's market cap is now $456M, after reaching $930M during 2012.

John McAdam (pictured), President and CEO, provided an optimistic update during F5's recent earning call, although a release date was not provided - despite previous reports about DPI reaching beta status (see "F5 - Moving Ahead with DPI (already in Beta)" - here).

"Our development team made fantastic progress last quarter in meeting their development milestones to deliver a significant new release of TMOS referred to internally as Solar .. and a new service provider solutions that carry a great network address translation, and policy enforcement module with deep po[a]cket inspections.

Our policy enforcement module allows bigger IT to inspect and classify application and protocol traffic and dynamically enforce service provider policies. For example, our policy enforcement module supports a GX interface enabling inter-operability with a broad set of PCRX[F] and our own traffic signaling delivery controller" [refers to the Traffix product line - see "F5 Acquires Traffix Systems for $135M" - here].

Later, questions from Matt Robison, Wunderlich Securities, referred also to DPI, and were answered by Karl Triebes - EVP, Product Development and CTO (see also "F5 Platform Road Map - 100GE Ports Planed for 2013/14" - here)

F5 VIPRION 4480

Q: So, is there any specific hardware that needs to be in place to invoke the policy enforcement – the DPI capability that is required for that?

A: Yes, with the PenModual [?], obviously our VIPRION platforms and our higher end platforms – right now, we don’t support it on the low end of the range yet, because it is very much focused on the surge provider market.

Q: Yes, so the VIPRION platforms that are available now can do it?

A: That is correct.

See "F5 Networks' CEO Discusses F1Q13 Results - Earnings Call Transcript" - by Seeking Alpha, here.

AT&T Mobility CMO - "Google Talk and other OTT should be Worried"

Sue Marek (pictured), interviewed David Christopher, CMO, AT&T Mobility, to FierceDeveloper.

Among other issues, David was asked about AT&T's recent Call Management API - "allowing developers to use the subscriber AT&T mobile number for communication services, and whether OTT providers should be worried about this".

David: "The core difference is that no one wants another phone number. GoogleTalk and all the OTT players make you get another number, and no one wants that. This is a no-brainer for carriers to do this, and we are first to announce it ..Yes [OTT should be worried] Or the OTT provider could look at this more from the developer view and figure out how to put this core mobile number into their social media  app. It will allow more innovation for developers and keep the mobile number as the center of relevance--which is very strategic for us. he mobile number is like your social security number--you have it for life. And for it to be able to be used in all facets [of life] is important. So if I'm an OTT provider, I'm going to be worried about this.

See "AT&T's Christopher gets real on HTML5, plans to take on OTT players" - here.

Cisco to Acquire SON Vendor Intucell; $475M

The local press here reports that Cisco is going to acquire Israeli-based Intucell for $475M.

I covered Intucell's $55M deal with AT&T a year ago (here).

Intucell claims that it ".. delivers the world’s most advanced Self Optimizing Network (SON) solution. In fact, it’s the only real SON solution. With real time network visibility provided by the groundbreaking Virtual Drive Test, Intucell’s systems automatically tune the network to actual conditions as they develop and change. They perform thousands of micro adjustments, dynamically adapting to demand – instead of jumping from one static working point to another. The result: users’ quality of experience improves, bandwidth-hungry services such as video streaming run more smoothly, effective network capacity is expanded".

Story by Asaf Gilad, Calcalist - here (Hebrew).

---UPDATE -- formal announcement by Cisco - "Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Intucell" - here

PeerApp: We have more than 300 Transparent Cache Customers

 
PeerApp announced that ".. more than 300 network operators worldwide have deployed its UltraBand product in their networks. UltraBand allows operators to deliver “over-the-top” Internet content with improved quality, while reducing associated network load and costs".

   

Announcements made during 2012 - Telma [Madagascar],  G8 Networks [Brazil], IBW [CentAm], MTS [India], Pelephone [Israel].

See "More than 300 Operators Now Using PeerApp UltraBand Transparent Cache" - here.

Sandvine CEO: "Telefonica and Comcast - Lion's Share of Revenues"; May Consider Small Acquisitions

   

Ankur Banerjee and Sriraj Kalluvila interviewed Dave Caputo (pictured), CEO, Sandvine to Reuters, following the vendor's recent winning announcement from Asian customers (see "Sandvine Asian Success Continues - $6.5M Follow-on Order" - here).

Quotes:

• Repeat orders from existing customers, which include U.S. cable TV provider Comcast Corp and Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA, would account for the "lion's share" of Sandvine's revenue this year [see "Sandvine Q4: Channel Success; Juniper - $7M Deal in NA" - here]
   
• a wider slowdown in telecoms spending and competition in the crowded mobile phone sector had not affected the company
   
• company's relationship with Telefonica had stabilized after delays in closing several projects with the Spanish company contributed to lower-than-expected earnings in the second quarter of 2012  [see "Update: Sandvine/ALU Agreement Signed; $2.5M Orders Received" - here]
   
• Sandvine might consider buying small technical companies, although he added that acquisitions were "not a huge focus".
  
  See also "Allot CEO Plans to Continue Acquisitions in 2013" - here.

See "Sandvine eyes growth in Asian telecom orders" - here.

Procera Adds High Performance Web Content Categorization & Filtering

Procera Networks announced the ".. availability of the "PacketLogicTM Content Intelligence solution, a groundbreaking enhancement to its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. The ContentLogic solution is the first networking product of its kind, capable of correlating the categories of content consumed by broadband subscribers for up to 100 million URLs with minimal performance impact to any of the PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement systems. A single PL20000 system can replace several racks of competing content categorization or filtering solutions, in addition to performing Intelligent Policy Enforcement .. PacketLogic Content Intelligence solutions are currently in trials worldwide, and will be generally available in Q2 2013"

Alexander Havang (pictured), CTO, Procera Networks said: “Network operators can now gain deeper insights into the trends that are driving traffic volume on their infrastructure with real-time visibility for both applications and content categories. ContentLogic can be used to protect users, provide analytics and deliver value added service offerings – without sacrificing performance or scalability”

See "Procera Networks Launches Content Intelligence Solution" - here.

Telefonica Launches Smart M2M; W/RT Monitoring

 
Telefónica Digital unveils ".. Smart M2M, a best-in-class web-based platform for the connectivity, management and control of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications .. Smart M2M Solution incorporates new advanced features such as real time monitoring of traffic type, volume and current consumption, technical supervision of lines (maps of connected devices, advanced diagnostics) and localization. It also offers innovative fraud detection functionalities, including the ability to restrict communications between a list of given devices or the possibility to establish traffic caps".

"Smart M2M Solution is already commercially available for Telefónica customers in Brazil and Spain and will soon be expanded to other countries, starting with Chile, Argentina and Czech Republic".

See "Telefónica launches its new Smart M2M Solution" - here.

[Prolexic Q4 DDoS Report]: 27.5% More Attacks; Average Attack 32 Hours, 5.9 Gbps

  

A recent report by Prolexic Technologies, find that the ".. scale and diversity of attacks increased against its global client base in Q4 2012 .. While Q4 media reports focused on large DDoS attacks primarily against U.S. financial services companies, Prolexic also mitigated 50+ Gbps DDoS attacks against clients in the e-Commerce and software as a service (SaaS) sectors"

Prolexic provided the following statistics for Q4, 2012:

	Q4, 2012	Change from Q3, 2012	Change from Q4 2011
Number of attacks		+27.5%	+19%
Infrastructure (network) attacks	Share - 75% SYN - 24%, ICMP - 18% UDP-15% DNS-4.7%	+17%*	+15%*
Application attacks	Share - 25% HTTP Get - 20%	+72%*	+30%*
Average Attack  length	32.2 hours	+67%	-6%
Average attack size	5.9 Gbps	+20%	+13%

^{* Increase in the number of attacks.}

See "Large-Scale DDoS Attacks Grow Bigger and More Diversified According to Prolexic’s Latest Report" - here.