Juniper's View on Sandvine SDN/NFV Integration

James Kelly [pictured] explains in a Juniper Networks' forum how Sandvine DPI was integrated with Juniper's SDN controller, Contrail [see "Sandvine Join Juniper's SDN Partnership"- here].

".. The way we have Sandvine integrated with Contrail, the virtualized Policy Traffic Switch (vPTS) [see "Sandvine: 'leading edge CSPs around the world are currently working with Sandvine on virtualization pilot projects'" - here] sits right in the network. The vPTS is the inline enforcement element of subscriber service and traffic management policies – these policies are created within Sandvine’s application layer to support the service provider business requirements and provide network analytics. With the advent of NFV, Sandvine has virtualized their components to run as VMs, but the PTS sitting in-network presents a challenge to manage and scale from an NFV point of view because as traffic flows through the vPTS, it may be represented by several VMs at a time and that number could be growing or shrinking in peak or lull times (not to mention HA or maintenance situations where they may be temporarily taken down or moved). This is where Contrail service chaining comes in and abstracts how data traffic flows into and out of the vPTS by taking care of selecting and load balancing traffic across all the VMs per vPTS instance in accordance with the VMs’ roles and states.

With the deployment model, operators have more flexibility and ease in the size of their Sandvine deployment. They are elastic, they scale very small or very large, and they can automate or simplify deployments with scripts or clicks instead of truck rolls and cabling. Also CSPs can now deploy a small- or medium-sized “vSandvine” deployment as a managed service for enterprises, lower-tiered ISPs, and MVNO customers, giving CSPs another new source of revenue"

See "Enabling Partner Services on Contrail: Making Networks Smarter" - here.