When Every Milisec Counts, You Need an Extranet

Colt announced the "launch of its financial services extranet Colt PrizmNet, which will connect providers of financial content – including market data, research and other services – to Capital Markets firms. A dedicated private network with deterministic low latency will guarantee reliable, consistent, and transparent content delivery. Providers already signed up to distribute content via Colt’s extranet service include NLX, Nasdaq, Japan Exchange Group (JPX) and Aquis Exchange.

The Colt PrizmNet service has been designed in consultation with over 20 investment banks, asset managers and brokers. It has four key differentiating features:

• Guaranteed deterministic latency for the delivery of content to the consumer
• Near real time network performance monitoring
• Self-service portal for easy access to content and services
• Superior business focused SLAs (Service Level Agreement)

The Colt PrizmNet service combines existing network and data centre assets as well as the financial services industry and low latency network experience of Colt, KVH and MarketPrizm. PrizmNet is available for all market participants across Europe today with similar services to follow across Asian markets and in key North American cities throughout 2015. Full functionality in all regions will be available by the end of 2015". 

See "Colt launches financial services extranet" - 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.

NI Deployments [280]: Neutrona Networks [LATAM] Uses Accedian for SLA Management, Performance Monitoring and Optimization

Accedian Networks announced that "Neutrona Networks has renewed its commitment to provide superior service experience to its customers by combining Accedian Networks’ Performance Assured Networking solutions with Neutrona’s pan-regional network.

As a “carrier’s carrier” that is uniquely focused on providing extended reach network access to many of the world’s largest international carriers into Latin America, Neutrona Networks delivers a level of innovation that provides a distinct advantage in today’s increasingly commoditized wholesale carrier market. 

Neutrona’s network was custom-built to combine the most robust data centers, fully redundant routing platforms, and multiple and diverse sub-sea cables, all managed by state-of-the art operations support systems and traffic analytics & engineering systems. All of this combined with Accedian’s EtherNID®, MetroNODE LT™ and Vision EMS™ solutions provides an unprecedented level of stability and visibility to Neutrona’s customers".

Luciano Salata [pictured], President & COO, Neutrona’s said: “We have been using Accedian EtherNID® technology in our network since 2011 to simplify the end-to-end management of SLA-based services and to carry-out effective service orchestration .. We have just completed a full technology refresh and have selected Accedian as our preferred partner for network performance monitoring and optimization.”

See "Neutrona Networks Selects Accedian Networks Solutions for Network Performance Monitoring and Optimization" - here.

Alcatel-Lucent: "third party pays favors content providers with deep pockets"; Needs Strong PCC and DPI

 
A blog post by Rich Crowe [pictured], Marketing Director, Alcatel-Lucent IP Platforms, to the vendor's blog, analyses the 1-800 (Zero rate to the subscriber, 3rd party pays) model in mobile data (see ESPN, Facebook).

"A third party pays plan is fair in that any content provider can subsidize the data its content consumes. This assumes that the net is neutral, meaning that data is treated with equal priority once it is on the mobile internet. In reality, third party pays favors content providers with deep pockets. Less well-funded content providers, smaller operations and start-ups that can’t afford to pay for data could lose traffic and face reduced advertiser support .. Content providers that subsidize large quantities of data will almost certainly seek service-level agreements (SLAs) that ensure a minimum level of quality for their traffic. These SLAs could de-prioritize traffic from other content providers, possibly to the point where providers’ services and brands are negatively affected. Subscribers consuming content that is not subject to an SLA could experience a corresponding service degradation"

"A strong policy control function will be essential for determining which subscriber data is zero-rated and billable to the third party content provider. Proper traffic identification is critical to policy control performance. It calls for deep packet inspection or knowledge that the access network identifier is unique to the third party traffic that is subject to the agreement".

See "Third party pays – Six degrees of mobile data plan innovation" - here. Related post - "[Guest Post]: 1-800 Apps Concept: Superficially Appealing but Unworkable" - here, 

NI Deployments [178]: Belgacom [Belgium] Uses ALU's to Manage SLAs

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it ".. is giving Belgacom .. the ability to measure the performance of mobile services offered to business customers, enabling Belgacom to guarantee that service level agreements (SLAs) are being met ..  with Alcatel-Lucent’s Service Quality Manager (SQM) .. Belgacom can accurately report on a range of key performance and quality indicators (such as service availability and reliability) that are important to its corporate clients. In turn, Belgacom can use this information to take actions to improve their clients’ customer experience"

Belgacom also uses ALU's PCRF product (see "Belgacom Uses ALU DSC" - here) and its 7750 service routers (see "Belgacom Uses ALU 7750 to Provide Application Visibly to Enterprises" - here).

"SQM will help Belgacom manage service quality in five core areas: Monitoring .. Informing .. Demonstrating .. Improving and  Committing"

See "Belgacom to offer mobile service quality guarantees thanks to Alcatel-Lucent" - here.

DPI Win: Procera Enforces SLA for Cloud Services in Asia

 
I believe that the following announcement from Procera Networks shows a new direction for the use of application and subscriber-aware traffic management and reporting solutions - managing traffic for "Cloud Services".

While DPI companies sold such solutions in the past (when it was simply called "hosting" or "co-location"), it wasn't a great success. Now, with the popularity of cloud services there is not reason why bandwidth consumption wont be one of the measured and charged items of the service, and traffic will be prioritized based on its business value, the same way storage and CPU cycles are used.
 
Procera announced that ".. it has received and deployed an initial order from a Tier-1 Asian Fixed/Mobile operator for a Cloud Services deployment. This operator serves more than 20 million fixed/mobile subscribers across their coverage footprint, and these cloud services apply to their customers as well as hosting subscribers .. The IPE deployment for the cloud service is focused on enforcing service level agreements (SLAs) for hosting customers and measuring bandwidth usage for billing purposes. Each customer is provided with detailed reports from PacketLogic Report Studio [here] that cover the applications being used to access their hosting service, the traffic load and peak values, as well as the delivered QoE, which can include packet loss on the Internet ".

See "New Tier-1 Asian Fixed/Mobile Operator Selects Procera For Cloud Services Deployment" - here.