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.

Cyan Enables CenturyLink NFV Services to Enterprises

Cyan (See "Cyan Adds Service Management and UBB" - here) and CenturyLink announced that "CenturyLink will leverage Cyan’s Blue Planet NFV Orchestrator to deliver NFV-enhanced services to enterprise and small and midsized business (SMB) customers. Cyan will provide CenturyLink orchestration for their Programmable Services Backbone (PSB). 

..Specifically, CenturyLink will use Cyan’s Blue Planet NFV Orchestrator to bridge multiple technologies to instantiate virtual network functions (VNF) from multiple vendors. Blue Planet will add these virtual network functions to CenturyLink’s network for quickly providing software-enabled services and ubiquitous service coverage to CenturyLink’s broad set of customers.
      

Blue Planet supports multi-vendor NFV Orchestration capabilities. The software can instantiate and control virtual functions, coordinate with physical and virtual network resources, and interconnect virtual functions (i.e., vFirewall, vDPI, vEncryption, vRouter, vDNS, etc.) to achieve service chaining".

See "CenturyLink to Offer NFV-Enhanced Services to Enterprise and SMB Customers with Cyan’s Blue Planet" - here.

ABI: Net Neutrality - a Risk for Telecom Vendors - Mainly in Fixed Networks

A recent report by Eric Abbruzzese, Research Analyst and Sam Rosen [pictured], Director, ABI Research, finds that "..Regulations on net neutrality have been at the center of attention recently throughout the world.Balancing the interests of businesses, governments, and consumers has been a challenge for all involved. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with Chairman Tom Wheeler, is especially struggling to resolve a moderate proposal with President Obama’s public pro-neutrality stance [see "FCC: 'No blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization'" - here]

The uncertain possibilities of neutrality regulation have impacted operators such as AT&T and Verizon, and vendors such as Cisco in the wireline broadband space, forcing a shift in priorities until regulations are finalized [see also "Attn: DPI Vendors - US Net Neutrality Vote on February" - here]

While the United States has the independent FCC at the head of neutrality decisions, groups in Europe and Canada are also facing difficult neutrality changes, with the European Council and the European Union (EU) parliament, as well as the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) leading decisions for the these regions. 

Carefully planning investments, and balancing wireline and wireless portfolios, will prove necessary for companies to continue to see success during this wireline-focused regulatory restructuring period .. Operators or carriers that have a heavy focus on wireline, such as CenturyLink or Cisco, may find it difficult to see growth with some regulatory outcomes, while companies with a more balanced portfolio, including Verizon, AT&T, and Ericsson will simply steer resources to the highest return markets". 

See "FCC Discussions on Net Neutrality Hampering Investment in Wireline Broadband, Steering Investment to Wireless" - here.

M-LAB Blames Transit Carriers for ISPs Service Performance Degradation

A new report by M-Lab concludes that "we observed sustained performance degradation experienced by customers of Access ISPs AT&T, Comcast, Centurylink, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon when their traffic passed over interconnections with Transit ISPs Cogent Communications, Level 3 Communications, and XO Communications.

In a large number of cases we observed similar patterns of performance degradation whenever and wherever specific pairs of Access/Transit ISPs interconnected. From this we conclude that ISP interconnection has a substantial impact on consumer internet performance -- sometimes a severely negative impact -- and that business relationships between ISPs, and not major technical problems, are at the root of the problems we observed.

Observed performance degradation was nearly always diurnal, such that performance for access ISP customers was significantly worse during peak use hours, defined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the hours between 7pm and 11pm local time. This allows us to conclude that congestion and under-provisioning were causal factors in the observed degradation symptoms. 

It is important to note that while we can infer that performance degradation is interconnection-related, we do not have the contractual details and histories of individual interconnection agreements. As such, we cannot conclude whether parties apart from the two we identify are also involved (e.g. in the case that an Access ISP shares an interconnection point with another, etc.). We leave this non-technical question open for further study by others and focus here on the impact of what we can observe on consumer performance through measurement".

See "ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance" - here.

US ISPs Agreed to Combat Major Cyber Security Threats

While US ISPs get ready to fight piracy by watching for illegal content downloads (here) they have also agreed to ".. better secure their communications networks and protect consumers and business".

  

An FCC press release announced that ".. an industry advisory group for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Communications, Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC), unanimously adopted recommendations for voluntary action by Internet service providers (ISPs) to combat three major cyber security threats, including botnets, attacks on the Domain Name System (DNS), and Internet route hijacking .. Chairman Genachowski applauds voluntary commitments by nation’s largest Internet Service Providers, including AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, T-Mobile and Verizon".

• Under the Anti-Bot Code, ISPs agree to educate consumers about the botnet threat, take steps to detect botnet activity on their networks, make consumers aware of botnet infections on their computers, offer assistance to consumers whose computers are infected and collaborate with other service providers that have also adopted the Anti-Bot Code
    
• DNSSEC is a set of secure protocol extensions that prevent such fraudulent activity
    
• CSRIC recommended an industry framework to prevent Internet route hijacking, which is the erroneous routing of Internet traffic through potentially untrustworthy networks 

Some examples from other countries: Sri-Lanka, Nigeria, Egypt, India, Korea, Argentina. AT&T also announced several security initiatives (here , here and here).    

See "FCC advisory committee adopts recommendations to minimize three major cyber threats, including an anti-bot code of conduct, ip route hijacking industry framework and secure DNS best practices" - here and more details (here).

DPI: NSA Scans AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink Traffic Going to Defense Firms

     
Ellen Nakashima reports to the Washington Post that "The National Security Agency is working with Internet service providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say .. The program uses NSA-developed “signatures,” or fingerprints of malicious code, and sequences of suspicious network behavior to filter the Internet traffic flowing to major defense contractors. That allows the Internet providers to disable the threats before an attack can penetrate a contractor’s servers. The trial is testing two particular sets of signatures and behavior patterns that the NSA has detected as threats. The Internet carriers are AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink. Together they are seeking to filter the traffic of 15 defense contractors".

See "NSA allies with Internet carriers to thwart cyber attacks against defense firms" - here.

While this is a case of "national security", security threats to enterprise customers are real and growing (see Cisco's report below). Nevertheless, security represents an opportunity for ISPs to sell a value-added service.

One aspect, offered by DPI/traffic management vendors is DDoS prevention functions, offered as an add-on to traffic management (see examples from Allot, Arbor, Procera and Sandvine), by detecting traffic anomalies and blocking the relevant packets, thus protecting networks and business or residential subscribers from being attacked.

A recent "Global Threat Report 1Q11" from Cisco (here) finds that "Malicious webmail represented 7% of all Web-delivered malware in March 2011, a 391% increase from January 2011 .. Enterprise users experienced an average of 274 Web malware encounters per month in 1Q11, a 103% increase compared to 2010. Unique Web malware encountered also increased (46%) in 1Q11, from 72,294 unique Web malware in January 2011 to 105,536 in March".

See also "ALU Bell Labs: Network Behavior Analysis Helps to Detect Malware Infection" - here and "Recent Cyber Monday DDoS Attacks "revealed a sophisticated and motivated attacker” - here.



Source: Cisco