RAD, Sandvine and CenturyLink Showcase Application–aware Networking Solutions

RAD, in collaboration with Sandvine and CenturyLink, announced that they are "conducting a joint Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstration  .. The three companies will showcase application–aware service level agreement networking solutions, designed for communications service providers (CSPs) .. The PoC will demonstrate powerful three core capabilities, including assured connectivity for Carrier Ethernet and IP, as well as application-aware visibility and policy control

RAD and Sandvine will demonstrate how their award-winning Service Assured Access and Cloud Services Policy Controller solutions are integrated in an application-aware networking architecture designed to help service providers, like CenturyLink, deliver highly reliable and intelligent business services. 

RAD's Service Assured Access

In particular, RAD’s programmable MiNID provides powerful SLA assurances, application aware networking, and packet capture capabilities in a very convenient “plug wherever you need” SFP sleeve form factor that is ideal for introducing innovative service offerings into existing networks without the need for forklift upgrades.
   
See "RAD, Sandvine and CenturyLink Will Conduct Application-Aware Networking with SLA Assurance Joint Proof of Concept at GEN 15 Conference" - here.

Verizon Uses Cisco to Offer SDN-Based, Application-Aware, Network Services

Verizon unveiled its "new software-defined WAN service using Cisco's Intelligent WAN (IWAN) technology that harnesses the power of the Internet with the performance and reliability of a private IP network, to help enterprises keep up with the continued growth of network traffic.

Through Cisco's software-defined WAN solution, Verizon is enabling a:

• Better User Experience: Integrated application optimization for improved and faster application performance
   
• Highly Secure Infrastructure and Applications: Robust, highly secure and certified routing platforms (ISRs and ASRs)
   
• Low Operational Cost: Intelligent Path Control to fully utilize both MPLS and the Internet
   
• IT Agility: Provision new sites and services faster with a hybrid WAN to support key business initiatives

Verizon and Cisco will both market and sell the managed solution to their respective enterprise customer bases in the U.S. beginning in September. The companies plan to roll out the solution in EMEA by the end of the year. The new solution will be supported by Verizon's IT consulting group which help enterprises manage their transition to SD-based networking". 

See "Verizon Becomes First Service Provider to Offer New Cisco Software-Defined Networking Technology" - here.

PCC Deployments [364]: QBoCel [Mexico] Uses FTS for Application-based Plans

FTS announced that "QBoCel, a Mexican MVNO that operates on Telefonica's Movistar Mexico network, has selected FTS' MVNO billing and policy control solution to offer innovative services to its customers. The multi-year, multi-million dollar project marks a significant expansion for FTS in the Latin America region.

Using Leap Billing's policy control and charging capabilities, QBoCel plans to offer application-based plans such as video, Facebook and VoIP packages, to enhance the customer experience and meet user demands for personalized pricing tiers and flexible data plans. 

In addition, QboCel intends to offer zero-rated data with free access to specific content as well as sponsored data plans, where data is paid by the over the top (OTT) content partner and not by the user.

See "Mexican MVNO QBoCel Selects FTS’ MVNO Billing & Policy Control Solution" - here.

Cisco Launches Application Engineered Routing

Cisco announced "three significant enhancements to the Cisco® Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) portfolio, an open, elastic, and application-centric network infrastructure framework that enables service providers to accelerate time to revenue while reducing the costs of deploying new services. The new technologies include:

Source: Cisco 

Application Engineered Routing (here)

• Cisco Application Engineered Routing - By enabling applications to communicate directly with the network, service providers can improve the quality of the customer experience and simplify network operations.
  
  With the introduction of Cisco Application Engineered Routing, Cisco is the first in the industry to build an agile service-creation environment, combining the capabilities of open, standards-based Segment Routing with software-defined-networking (SDN). This end-to-end solution drives new levels of programmability, allowing service providers to reduce operational costs and drive incremental revenue with on-demand latency, bandwidth and availability capabilities.
  
  John Leddy, VP of Network Strategy, Comcast said: “Comcast’s Converged Network is the strategic platform for delivering our Internet, Video, Voice, and Business products. As new advanced services are developed leveraging technologies like; Cloud and NFV, our network needs to simplify, scale and become extensible. We see IPv6 and Segment Routing as major elements in the evolution of the network. The ability of the network to support, not impede the innovation occurring in software and services, will be a major step forward.”
    
• Cisco IOS XRv 9000 Virtual Router
   
• High-density 100GE line cards for the Cisco ASR 9000 Series

See "Cisco Adds New Application-Centric Capabilities to Service Provider Networking Portfolio" - here.

Allot Launches Application/Office 365 Aware Cloud Access Optimization

Allot Communications announced "Allot Cloud Access Optimization, including Allot Cloud Access Optimization for Office 365 support. Allot Cloud Access Optimization is a solution designed for enterprises and cloud managed service providers to ensure high user quality of experience (QoE) and productivity by visualizing, controlling and securing applications .. The Allot Cloud Access Optimization solution is available immediately and offered at three levels: 

• Essential – Meets the requirements of campus and branch office users accessing hybrid cloud applications
   
• Secure – Designed for enterprise data center and campus users and for cloud managed services data center access
   
• Advanced – Optimized for enterprises and cloud managed service providers that require security, scale, and integration with additional access security and monitoring solutions

.. Allot today also released Cloud Access Optimization for Office 365, a solution that supports visibility and control for individual Office 365 applications such as Lync, PowerPoint, and Word. The solution ensures predictable performance and excellent user experience for businesses, particularly as an increasing number of organizations look to securely migrate their on-premise Microsoft applications to the cloud"/

See "Allot Communications Launches Cloud Access Optimization Solution with Microsoft Office 365 Support" - here.

Orange Business Services Offers Application-aware Business VPN Internet

 
Orange Business Services announced it is "extending its core Business VPN service with Business VPN Internet. 

It is designed to meet the growing demand from multinational corporations (MNCs) for high-performance, secure access to Internet-based cloud and Web services ..  It provides secure business-class Internet, which improves performance for the entire network by eliminating congestion risks on the IP VPN, reducing Internet access latency and prioritizing business-critical traffic.

To deliver Business VPN Internet, Orange Business Services has initially invested in 15 global Internet gateways on five continents (London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai, Sydney, Tokyo, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg and Bahrain) .. application prioritization: new Internet Class of Service (CoS) enables accurate application prioritization and supports traffic bursting between the Internet and IP VPN as required. 

See "Orange Business Services extends network to drive enterprise digital transformation" - here.

Allot: Expects US Growth; VAS Could Reach 50% of Revenues

Allot Communications published its Q2 results (revenues on $28.2M, here). During the earning call, the new President and CEO, Andrei Elefant [pictured], who assumed the CEO position on July 1st, provided some observations on the DPI business:

• Revenue from EMEA where 62% and bookings from this territory during the quarter indicates a continuous pull up from the 2012 flows. APAC and Americas were each 19% of revenues.
     
• In the U.S., we feel that the interest from the side of service providers in application-centric solutions is growing, as the industry approaches the final phase of the new net neutrality rules formation. The FCC will vote on accepting the new net neutrality rule during the second half of September, once the period of comment submission by industry participants is terminated. We believe that the interest in application-centric solutions will grow thereafter. 
  
  Related post: "Sandvine to the FCC: Internet Fast Lanes are not Needed" - here.
   
• We note that the progress to win new customers in the U.S. may be lengthy, but might expedite once the regulatory framework is completed .. we already have projects, a Tier 1 operators in the U.S. And this is something that we won 2 years ago and we have some very nice customers in North America. The comment that I was making [above] is mainly to explain that we believe that the environment is going to look better for us because of the recent changes that we see .. We have some projects in the pipeline ..

Regarding Value-Added services:

• Our funnel consists of major portion of value-added service projects and we continue to view this segment, spearheaded by revenue-generating services such as analytics, network security and application-centric services, as key catalyst for our ongoing growth
   
• we see between 20% to 30% of our booking coming from the value-added services .. [Q: So you're saying it could go 50-50?] A: Yes
   
• ..these value-added services are helping us also to penetrate and helping us on the competitive front to differentiate ourselves versus competition
   
• Examples for these directions are application-centric services such as zero-rated plans and personalized security services. We are seeing an increased demand for such applications from the side of leading global mobile service providers, and our offering in this space is gradually becoming a meaningful focus of our overall value-added services suite

See "Allot Communications' (ALLT) CEO Andrei Elefant on Q2 2014 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.

Success for Application-Based Service Plans in Zimbabwe

According to Dan Deeth, Sandvine, post to the vendor's blog, Econet Wireless' offering of WhatsApp and Facebook bundles [see "Econet Wireless [Zimbabwe] Uses Sandvine for Application-based Charging" - here] is "continuing to out-maneuver and out-innovate competitors. These unlimited bundles allow subscribers to purchase unlimited usage of their favorite service for a day, week, or monthly for a low fee ..In the short time they have been available, adoption of these bundles has been incredible for Econet. .. WhatsApp accounted for over 23% of total network traffic in March 2014. Since that time, adoption of these plans, as well as WhatsApp traffic has continued to accelerate thanks to positive word of mouth as well as the launch of new budget-friendly smartphones .. competing [Telecel Zimbabwe] networks have begun to offer similar plans in Zimbabwe".

See "More of WhatsAppening in Zimbabwe" - here.

[Disruptive Analysis]: "Fast Lanes" won't be Worth Much

A new study by Dean Bubley [pictured], Founder, Disruptive Analysis finds that "New Non-Neutral Mobile Broadband Business Models will generate $25bn in 2019 - just 6% of total mobile Internet/data access revenue, excluding those plans that just use outright blocking/throttling, and those with just some form of zero-rating of apps/content - the latter will also be important, at >1.5bn users getting 'something for free'".

The study looks into the "viability and potential scale of over 25 forms of "non-neutral" mobile broadband & Internet business models, such as "sponsored data", "zero-rated" apps and differential network QoS or "fast lanes" .. mobile operators are hoping that less-rigid "neutrality" rules will allow application-based charging for end-users, or perhaps new revenues from content companies paying for traffic on behalf of users (sponsored data) or for extra QoS. While some countries allow - or even mandate - blocking of certain apps, that is not generally an option in Europe, North America or most other advanced markets"

• Conversely, so-called "fast lanes" for mobile video or applications are complex to achieve, cause huge controversy and - in the final analysis - likely won't be worth much anyway.

• Zero-rating of certain applications is interesting - some say it distorts competition and encourages mobile operators to reduce "general" open-Internet quotas, in favour of revenue-share deals with content players, or gives Facebook or Google too much of a lock over new Internet users. Yet it also does allow access to Wikipedia or educational material for free, and in many cases is just a promotional tool rather than a strategic shift. Disruptive Analysis feels it should be watched closely, but is not yet a major Neutrality risk (although the Chilean regulators recently thought differently, and banned it). 

See "Only 6% of Mobile Broadband revenues from "non-neutral" access by 2019" - here.

Cisco's New WAE Enables SP's Application-Aware WAN Services

 
Cisco announced it has added "..Cisco WAN Automation Engine(WAE) to its Evolved Services Platform (ESP), marking another key milestone in the company’s network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined-networking (SDN) strategy. These new capabilities will provide service providers with tools they need to analyze, visualize and control functions across multi-vendor, wide area networks (WAN)"

Cisco added quotes from Tencent, Italtel, TDS (Sandvine customer - here) , XO Communications and Wow! to the release, about the use of WAE or its predecessor, MATE.

Technology Highlights:

• Situational and Predictive Analysis: Uses historical traffic data and anticipated demand to produce real-time and predictive models that increase overall service velocity; calculates high traffic “what-if” analysis while offering solutions for ultimate load balancing; utilizes flexible policy routing to enforce latency and utilization constraints for overall network optimization.
   
• Traffic Visualization: Enables an accurate “total WAN” topology view with comprehensive modeling; collects and models traffic, equipment and topology data while maintaining the “state” of each and then maps everything together for holistic, real-time network transparency; utilizes time-sequenced global models to provide accurate forecasting across thousands of WAN nodes.
   
• Control and Automated Provisioning: Extends Cisco ESP advanced orchestration and management across the WAN and dynamically assesses total traffic views to allow on-the-fly WAN reconfiguration of path calculations.

See "Cisco Delivers Advanced Traffic Visibility and Control with New WAN Automation Engine" - here.

tw telecom Launches Dynamic Application Prioritization over VPN Service

 

tw telecom announced an ".. industry first capability that gives users the ability to control network class of service implementations on demand, in real time, dynamically across its IP VPN and managed services. These industry first capabilities allow customers to prioritize their applications according to rapidly changing business needs and immediately adjust network class of service priorities to meet those applications requirements. 

[see also "tw telecom: 3 Steps Towards Application Aware Networking" - here]

The company's Dynamic Prioritization capability is a new feature of its Intelligent Network that frees users from outdated, static industry processes that force companies to pre-determine their application priorities and write service orders, waiting days or weeks before required changes are implemented.

With Dynamic Prioritization, tw telecom provides its customers comprehensive Intelligent Network capabilities to enhance and expand their network prioritization with real-time control in support of IT applications across a secure and scalable network, with no downtime. Customers can manage the assignment of bandwidth by class of service (CoS) and optimize their business applications in any situation, at any time". 

See "tw telecom Introduces Dynamic Prioritization For On Demand Customer Control of Class of Service Strategies" - here.

Frontier Adds Traffic Prioritization based on User-defined Applications

Frontier Communications ".. continues to enhance its Ethernet portfolio, now offering traffic prioritization based on user-defined applications. New Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities significantly improve network efficiencies and availability by prioritizing critical applications.

Frontier is introducing two new Ethernet offerings for Retail and Wholesale users:

• Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) Gold focuses on businesses needing point-to-point design within Frontier's QoS-enabled markets, requiring service level agreements (SLAs) surrounding bandwidth guarantees, a limited delay in traffic prioritization and monthly reporting.
   
• Frontier's EVPL Platinum offers premium point-to-point service for customers with real-time data delivery requirements and corresponding SLAs".

See "Frontier Communications Enhances Ethernet Portfolio" - here.

Research: Crowd Source as a Base for SDN Application Awareness

A paper by Zafar Qazi, Stony Brook University; Jeongkeun Lee, HP Labs; Tao Jin, Qualcomm Research; Gowtham Bellala, HP Labs; Manfred Arndt, HP Networking; Guevara Noubir [pictured],  Northeastern University present application awareness into Software-Defined Networking (SDN),

See "Application-Awareness in SDN" - here.

ABSTRACT (see poster below)

We present a framework, Atlas, which incorporates application awareness into Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which is currently capable of L2/3/4-based policy enforcement but agnostic to higher layers. Atlas enables fine-grained, accurate and scalable application classification in SDN. It employs a machine learning (ML) based traffic classification technique, a crowd-sourcing approach to obtain ground truth data and leverages SDN’s data reporting mechanism and centralized control. We prototype Atlas on HP Labs wireless networks and observe 94% accuracy on average, for top 40 Android applications.

InfoVista Integrates Application Visibility w/DPI, Cisco AVC and ALU RAM

InfoVista announced that the ".. latest version of 5View™ Service Data Manager (SDM) will be made generally available on May 13, 2013..  With InfoVista’s 5View SDM, CSPs can benefit from the solution’s customer-facing portal and alarm capabilities empowering business customers with real-time, detailed application performance information crucial for troubleshooting, service/application usage analysis, traffic engineering and capacity planning. The comprehensive, intuitive visibility enabled by 5View SDM drives both incremental revenue growth and the growth of CSPs’ VPN, Internet, and cloud business services.

The latest release of 5View SDM comes with pre-built integration for Cisco Application Visibility & Control (AVC)—part of the Cisco Integrated Services Routers with Application Experience (Cisco ISR-AX)—as well as for Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM. This provides CSPs with multiple options to launch application-aware services leveraging CE- or PE-based architectures, various vendor flow technologies including Netflow, Flexible Netflow, sflow, jflow and IPFIX as well as use InfoVista’s own DPI appliances in the data center, and in turn, offer enhanced application usage and performance visibility for enterprise customers".

See "InfoVista Launches Application Visibility Services Solution to Help Communications Service Providers Increase Business Service Revenues" - here. 

NI Deployments [192]: BT Uses Riverbed for Global Applications-aware Networking Services

Riverbed Technology introduced ".. two new virtual editions to the Riverbed® Cascade® product family that enable managed service providers (MSPs) to deliver application-aware network performance management (NPM) as a service to their small-to-medium-sized and enterprise customers. The new Cascade Profiler Virtual Edition and Cascade Gateway Virtual Edition plus the existing Cascade Shark Virtual Edition provide a completely virtualized NPM solution portfolio that allows MSPs to deliver continued value in a virtualized world with the next-generation of performance management .. The new virtual edition products are expected to be generally available in Q4 2012"

"In addition to providing the visibility needed for monitoring and troubleshooting network and application performance, Cascade products provide customers the critical information they need for strategic IT decision making and planning across projects, including data center consolidation, virtualization, and WAN optimization"

Keith Langridge, VP, Network Services at BT Global Services said : "BT has always been at the forefront of delivering application performance management to help organizations succeed in a complex, global environment. By integrating the latest application-aware network monitoring techniques from Riverbed Cascade products into our established BT Connect Acceleration service, we can help customers get the most out of their networks"

See "Riverbed Delivers Network and Application Performance Monitoring to Managed Service Providers" - here.

CDN Deployments [190]: DT Uses EdgeCast for Application Delivery Network

    

Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS), the international wholesale arm of Deutsche Telekom AG, announced " .. the launch of Application Delivery Network. The new service is capable of substantially improving the performance and throughput of web applications and the provision of dynamic content. Application Delivery Network (ADN), based on the cutting-edge CDN technology of EdgeCast, is a multi-layered, easy-to-use service that combines best practice optimizations with core technology refinements".

See "EdgeCast Shows 77% Performance Improvement w/Integrated Google’s PageSpeed" - here and "EdgeCast Announced "Licensed CDN"; Deployed by Pacnet and AT&T(?)" - here.

Source: ICSS

"With ADN, ICSS complements its CDN Solution portfolio, which is based on a global footprint. It supports content delivery requirements, be it caching, multi-platform streaming, premium storage, content security and in-depth analytics. Value-added services and the web-based, self-provisioning portal complete the CDN offering"

See "Deutsche Telekom launches Application Delivery Network" - here.

Standards News: BBF Released Policy Control Framework

Broadband Forum (BBF) standard for policy control : TR134 - Broadband Policy Control Framework  (here) was just released, edited by Ezer Goshen from BandWD and Bill Welch from Juniper Networks..

Abstract

TR-134 defines an architectural Framework to provide policy control of Broadband Multi-Service Networks. This Technical Report specifies business requirements, use cases, and a minimum set of Information Flows that facilitate the management and execution of policies.

The document defines ".. seven high level use cases.  The uses cases are used to describe the needs 

of Service providers and how they can be addressed using both provisioned and Policy based 

solutions.   Most of the seven use cases contain a number of more specific sub uses cases. These 

sub use cases represent the originally contributed use cases, and they have been consolidated on 

the basis of the underlying network functions that are used to address them:

• Layer 1 – 4 and QoS based Policy
• Layer 4 – 7 Traffic Policy
• Call Admission Control
• Authentication, Metering and Accounting Policy Use case
• Home Gateway use case
• Application Layer Policy [see chart below for one of the sub use cases] 
• Emergency Services Use Case"
   

.

tw telecom: 3 Steps Towards Application Aware Networking

A number of carriers have already introduced the concept of application-aware networking to their business customers. KDDI, Telstra, Belgacom and Reliance, are among those I covered in the past.

tw teleom, a US carrier providing managed data, Internet and voice networking solutions to businesses and large organizations throughout the U.S, is now joining the list adding bandwidth on demand and self-provisioning and reporting portal to the service. 

Sean Buckley reported to Fierce Telecom in June on the presentation of Larissa Herda (pictured), CEO and Chairman, tw telecom and Michael Rouleau, Senior VP of Business Development at the recent Cowen and Company 40th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (webcast -here) in which they ".. outlined the details of its new intelligent network initiative that will allow customers to dial up bandwidth and enact better control over their applications .. although the new automated capabilities are still in beta testing, the service provider did reveal that there are three phases to the intelligent network drive targeted at its IP/VPN and Ethernet portfolio: enhanced management, dynamic capacity and application aware network":

• ".. With enhanced management, the customer will be able to see the performance of the circuit in the metro, long-haul and remote office end
   
• ..the dynamic capacity (see the prototype user interface below) feature will enable the customer to increase their capacity in real-time in an on-demand basis. Currently in beta, this feature allows a business customer to go into a portal to double or triple their capacity. The system will tell them how much it will cost on a per Mbps hour basis to increase that bandwidth, and when the customer hits submit the system will check if the capacity is there, provisions the circuit and provides that capability all without any impact on their regular service
    
• Finally, with the application-aware network, a customer will be able to get more control of what's going on in their network so they can prioritize in real-time certain applications over others and apply network resources to those mission critical applications". 

Source: tw telecom investor presentation, May 2012

See "tw telecom sets stage for network service automation" - here.

Cisco: Introduction to "Flow Metadata"

 
A post to Cisco's blog by Ulrica de Fort-Menares (pictured), Director of product management, Medianet, discusses Flow Metadata "..allows an application to explicitly signal any arbitrary attributes to the network from node to node. This avoids the pitfall of data not being visible for deep packet inspection due to increasing use of encryption and obfuscation".

See "Cisco's Medianet Brings QoS For Video Using DPI" - here.

 

"Tradition network classification solution using deep packet inspection technology is localized as classification may not be available along the path. How can network element enforce policies if they do not have uniform view of traffic to apply consistent enforcement of network policies ? Flow Metadata is reusable across network nodes by allowing sharing of flow attributes amongst network nodes. This allows appropriate and consistent policies to be applied at each hop, end to end, improving the quality of experience".

Source: Cisco - Medianet Metadata 

See "A new Application recognition paradigm – Flow metadata" - here.

KDDI and Ipanema Team to Offer Business-Aware Network Services

  

KDDI and Ipanema Technologies, are teaming up at Interop Tokyo 2012 exhibition and conference to offer "..New generation of business aware Network Services: you will see how a network knows the Application Content to better serve Business" (see "Research Shows the Need for Application-aware Networking" - here).

Yoichi Ide, General manager of Global Sales & Marketing Department, KDDI said: "Business aware networking, Business continuity and Cloud Services are really an integral part of KDDI Global solutions that ensure seamless communication for our customers in emerging markets of Latin America, throughout Asia, and around the world”.

Few months ago KDDI deployed a DDoS prevention solution from Arbor (here) also targeting enterprise customers.

See "KDDI application optimization service powered by Ipanema technologies at Interop Tokyo" - here.