Allot Offers NFV-Based TDF and Security Functions Over HP's OpenNFV

The Journey to NFV

Source: HP (here)

Allot Communications announced its participation in the "HP OpenNFV Partner Program ..  As part of the program, Allot will be offering its virtual Traffic Detection Function (vTDF) [see "Allot Enhances DPI Gateway with Standard TDF" - here] and security services on the HP OpenNFV platform. The integration demonstrates service enablement and delivery for virtual security services that are deployed over the HP OpenNFV cloud environment platform. Following the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) evolving standards, Allot’s vTDF together with Allot’s Element Manager (EM) enables dynamic creation and management of pre-integrated security services such as Allot’s DDoS protection and content-filtering.

[Related post: "Allot and Procera Push NFV-based DPI" - here]

..Allot’s integration with HP OpenNFV components such as HP NFV Director and HP Helion enables onboarding of Allot’s virtual solutions in the HP ecosystem environment. This transition from proprietary equipment installed in a specific topology location to Virtual Network Functions – that can be distributed throughout the network and uniformly managed – enables operators to:

• Simplify and automate service deployment, provisioning and configuration
• Add elasticity to the network for more fluid and efficient allocation of resources
• Leverage distributed cloud infrastructure to implement complex use cases with ease
• Reduce time-to-market for consumer and business services"

See "Allot Communications Offers Robust Security Services on HP OpenNFV Cloud Platform" - here.

Allot and Procera Push NFV-based DPI

Allot Communications and Procera Networks take the NFV concept one step forward and demoed some capabilities, during SDN & NFV USA 2014 in Dallas, TX., that took place earlier this week, and in SDN & OpenFlow World Congress, Germany next month. 

• Allot, participating in both events, announced the ".. demonstration of a virtual Traffic Detection Function (vTDF) as part of a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) network to enable application-centric plans and advanced services. 
  
  Allot’s vTDF provides all of the capabilities provided today by the physical TDF including traffic detection, analytics, policy enforcement and charging. In addition, the vTDF offers cost savings, reduced time to market for new and complex services and deployment flexibility advantages. The vTDF can be deployed anywhere in the network, from the RAN to the core network, to facilitate application-centric use cases and services".
  
  See "Allot Demonstrates Industry’s First Virtual Traffic Detection Function at SDN & NFV USA 2014" - here (see also "Vedicis and 6WIND Launched Virtual PCEF and TDF" - here)
    
• Procera announced that during the event in Germany it will be "participating in the ETSI NFV proof-of-concept #19 on the acceleration of network functions in carrier networks. Procera’s Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) will be embedded in the NFV proof-of-concept solution in collaboration with Avago, Ericsson, Tieto, and ARM.
  
  NAVL is an easily integrated embedded intelligence engine that provides real-time, Layer-7 classification of network application traffic and metadata extraction in a reliable, scalable and cost-effective way to deliver industry leading coverage and accuracy".
  
  See "Procera Networks to Discuss Possibilities of Mobile Policy Control at SDN & OpenFlow World Congress 2014" - here. (see also "Procera: "lower than anticipated total addressable market" for NAVL" - here). 

Vedicis and 6WIND Launched Virtual PCEF and TDF

Vedicis and 6WIND announced they have launched  "virtual Policy Control Enforcement (vPCEF) and virtual Traffic Detection Function (vTDF) appliances to support mobile operators in their move towards Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) architecture. 

The Vedicis solution runs on a standard Intel server and includes:

• Red Hat OS with KVM hypervisor
• Open vSwitch
• 6WINDGate NFV Infrastructure (NFVI)
• Vedicis Content Smart Switch

.. vPCEF and vTDF are required to provide DPI-based advanced charging, bandwidth and congestion control, and traffic visibility for data usage knowledge .. 6WIND’s Fast vNIC driver is integrated into Vedicis’ Content Smart Switch running as a Red Hat KVM guest to exchange packets (external traffic and VM to VM communication) with faster virtual input/output (I/O) technologies". 

See "vPCEF & vTDF Platform" - here.

Allot Enhances DPI Gateway with Standard TDF; Deployed by LTE Operators

Allot Communications announced the ".. availability of its pure-play, 3GPP-compliant Traffic Detection Function (TDF) for LTE networks. Allot is a leader in LTE TDF [learn more about TDF - here] solutions, and several top tier LTE operators are already utilizing the TDF-enabled Allot Service Gateway to analyze subscriber behavior and monetize their broadband networks .. The TDF-enabled Allot Service Gateway is a pure-play solution that enables CSPs to analyze and monetize OTT traffic by leveraging application awareness and transaction information in order to deploy innovative pricing plans, drive new service revenues and increase customer loyalty. Allot led the standardization efforts of TDF for LTE and continues to lead standardization activity for connecting TDF to other 3GPP components for policy control and charging purposes".

See "Allot Communications' 3GPP-Compliant TDF Offers CSPs Innovative Ways to Analyze and Capitalize on LTE Traffic" - here.

Allot-Tekelec and Procera-Comptel Interoperability

MWC announcements start on the lighter issues - today it is about interoperability. My PCRF-DPI table (here) already shows the two announced today - but it seems the relations have been upgraded/expanded:

• Allot Communications and Tekelec have "completed Interoperability Testing (IOT) for the 3GPP Sd interface (see "Resource: 3GPP Traffic Detection Function (TDF)/Service Awareness Overview" - here) that offers service providers more powerful application policy control and enforcement with a more efficient network architecture.
  
  The IOT was performed to support a global Tier-1 mobile operator that plans to implement application-specific policies .. the companies are the first to announce IOT over the new Sd Diameter Interface, which communicates between the Tekelec Policy Server (PCRF) and Allot's Service Gateway Sigma E Traffic Detection Function (TDF) in order to enable detection and enforcement control over applications"
  
  See "Allot and Tekelec Complete Interoperability Testing to Expand Policy Control to Over-The-Top Applications" - here.
   
• Comptel announced that it has "completed interoperability testing with Procera Networks .. The companies' joint, real-time policy control and charging solution, which consists of Comptel Policy Control and Procera's PacketLogic Subscriber Manager and PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement (PRE), enables communications service providers (CSP) to offer, manage and monetise advanced data services, while optimising network usage, improving the overall customer experience .. The interoperability test demonstrated how policy and charging rules managed by Comptel Policy Control could be enforced in Procera's PRE product based on the real-time inspection of network traffic".
  
  
  See "Comptel and Procera Collaborate on Real-Time Policy Control and Charging to Optimise the Customer Experience" - here.

Source: Comptel

NSN Patent: "Detecting Service Data of a Packet Data"

 
A recently published US patent application by Nokia Siemens Networks (inventors - Rasanen, Juha Antero and Sarja, Jorma Tapio) - ".. relates to an apparatus, a system, a method and a computer program product for transmitting to a policy and/or charging server information relating to a user, wherein the information includes an indication of a service data detecting entity for detecting service data of a packet data connection of the user, and initiating communication towards the service data detecting entity based on the received information".

See "Method, Apparatus and System for Detecting Service Data of a Packet Data Connection" - here.

What's Interesting? Top 10 Posts for 2011

 

The table below shows the Broadband Traffic Management blog's 10 most read posts during 2011, based on Google Analytics (which is not perfect, but surly indicative). The list is ranked by number of page-views, normalized to 100 points for the top item. It does not include top bar Pages  (the PCRF-DPI matrix would have been ranked first with 624 points) and posts from 2010.

No doubt - the most interesting posts are about M&As or IPO. Interesting entries are #5 covering, with some exclusive information, Amdocs' PCRF (since then Amdocs acquired Bridgewater); #8, a guest post by Acme Packet (since then they renamed the product to Diameter signaling controller) and #10, an overview of 3GPP's TDF facility.

ITEM	Points
[Calcalist] Rumors - F5 to Buy Allot for $450-500M (Jul)	100
[Globes]: Palo Alto Networks IPO Plans - Market Cap of $1-2B (Mar)	91
AT&T Detects and Enforces Tethering Policy (Mar)	79
Rumors: Akamai to Buy Cotendo for $300M (Nov)	77
Amdocs Launches PCRF (Jan)	71
Sandvine New DPI Device for LTE - Focusing on Space and Port Density Efficiency  (Feb)	66
Exclusive: The 2011 DPI CEO Panel (Jan)	66
[Guest Post]: “Policy exchange controllers - scaling policy infrastructure in LTE and IMS” (Aug)	55
Heavy Reading: Policy Servers and Enforcers Market to Reach $2B in 5 Years (Aug)	50
Resource: 3GPP Traffic Detection Function (TDF)/Service Awareness Overview  (Aug)	49

ATIS - Net Neutrality Compliant Network Optimization Use Cases

      

A recent presentation of ATIS' Network Optimization Focus Group (led by Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper), lists 7 use cases for network optimization:

• Congestion‐aware Fairness
• Subscriber / Application Aware Network Optimization
• Network Aware Scheduling of Content
• User Rate Plans
• Reasonable Network Protection and Management
• Load and Policy Aware Multi‐RAN Selection
• Optimizing Use of Wireless Non‐Bearer Resources‐aware Fairness

These "Scenarios address Quality of Experience improvements as well as cost savings and revenue opportunities" and "consider the current net neutrality rules".

The group has also identified "A number of critical enhancements identified as areas for further standardization"

The presentation is available here. See also "ATIS - Creating a Common Policy Management Framework" - here.

Resource: 3GPP Traffic Detection Function (TDF)/Service Awareness Overview

  
The slide below shortly explains TDF - Traffic Detection Function in 3GPP R.11, using the Sd interface.

The slide is taken from a presentation made by Dr. Sungho Choi (pictured) ,Vice Chairman of 3GPP TSG SA (representing SMASUNG), last May. The presention "Evolution of the 3GPP Network Architecture,(the Evolved Packet Core)" is available here.

See also "[Tekelec] The Benefits of Policy Controlled Video Optimization" - here.