GTP is used to convey IP data traffic to and from mobile subscribers. While it’s been around for some time, as we move towards all IP-based LTE networks, the importance of GTP will continue to grow. Users don’t know it’s there, but they do know when a data session doesn’t work or is slow.

If GTP data isn’t transmitted in a timely and efficient manner, users notice – and start to complain to their service provider. This costs money – impacting margins and reducing profit. What’s worse, it’s a significant contributor to churn. As user demands grow, the importance of a consistent, reliable user experience is likely to grow too, with the result that operators have to protect their network to ensure that users obtain the service they expect.

This means that they need to closely monitor GTP flows to ensure smooth operation. But this is challenging as, each month, there is more and more data being conveyed across the network. In order to keep pace with this demand, operators need to deploy specialist hardware platforms that can intercept, filter and monitor GTP data in real-time, ensuring that the next flows smoothly and that potential issues are identified at an early stage so that problems can be avoided or minimised before they cascade through the network.

Hardware acceleration tools that can process data at line rates of more than 10Gb/s are required to ensure that GTP data is correctly processed and delivered at the required rate. Operators need to sort GTP streams and identify the correct session data, charging data and so on, to ensure that customers are billed correctly and that they obtain the data experience to which they are entitled. Simply keeping pace with this isn’t enough. Operators have to proactively manage the network, which means actively verifying that it is functioning as expected. If they don’t, customers will be the first to notice and they will be quick to swamp the complaints department.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help filter and stream mobile data for a range of applications, why not get in touch? Telesoft Technologies is a Gold sponsor of the forthcoming “Future of Cyber Security” event, to be held in London at Canary Wharf on the 19^th of March – If you would like to book a meeting with Telesoft during the conference or learn more about how we can help, please call Callum Rasmussen on +44 1258 486518.

Telesoft Technologies is a Gold sponsor of the forthcoming “Future of Cyber Security” event, to be held in London at Canary Wharf on the 19^th of March.

Product expert Steve Patton will be delivering a seminar on “A hybrid hardware/software approach to cyber security”. As transmission rates on networks accelerate from 10G, through 40G to 100Gb/s, software only implementations of DPI cannot process the packet throughput, and will miss vital signatures or identities.

Telesoft Technologies will discuss a hybrid approach, designed to ensure that no information is lost. By using a combination of intelligent hardware pre-filtering and “back in time” analysis on high speed interfaces it is possible to rapidly identify flows of specific interest, ensuring that later stages of host analysis only see packets of interest.

The Future of Cyber Security 2012 conference brings over 400 senior decision-makers face to face with leading cyber security specialists.

Designed exclusively for central and local government organisations, NGOs and major private sector enterprises, the event provides conference delegates with a unique opportunity to interact with thought leaders in the field.

Conference sessions and seminars will give senior IT, information and security officers unrivalled insight into the cyber threats of today and the potential threats of tomorrow.

To register for this important event, simply follow this link. If you would like to book a meeting with Telesoft during the conference or learn more about how we can help, please call Callum Rasmussen on +44 1258 486518.

USSD has been used as a means of establishing data sessions in GSM networks for many years. As technology has moved towards IP and true Internet connectivity, it’s easy to forget that there are legacy alternatives that are still relevant.

In recent news, it’s emerged that USSD has a role to play in helping users of 2G devices access social media such as Facebook. This technology has almost been forgotten by some, but it provides a robust and simple means to send data from mobile devices. In countries where smartphones are expensive and haven’t yet reached significant deployment figures, that’s exciting.

Deploying USSD solutions can help close the digital divide and enable feature-phone users to access desirable and popular services. It can mean an end to exclusion – and provide valuable revenue to MNOs in emerging markets. What’s more, it helps reinforce and build customer loyalty.

USSD has never gone away – it still plays a key role in a number of services. By using it to solve this problem, operators can find new ways to offer engaging services across their entire user base. Of course, they will still need high-performance USSD gateways. That’s where we can help. Our USSD solutions have been trusted by leading operators for more than a decade. Our technology has continued to advance and we can help deploy solutions that enable broader access to mobile data services, using this proven technology.

Contact us today to find out how our USSD technology can help deliver today’s services!

Data analytics has captured considerable attention lately. Mobile network operators are looking for ways to increase monetization of their networks. While an obvious way is to try to increase the amount of money spent by individual customers, it’s not enough simply to launch more and more services in the hope that they will be consumed. MNOs need to be more creative than that. They need to understand what the customer really wants and to provide offers that reflect these interests.

It’s now believed that this can be achieved through personalization. MNOs want to ensure that customers have access to a portfolio of services that are targeted towards their needs, preferences and activity patterns. But it’s quite a challenge to achieve these levels of personalisation at the scale demanded by mobile networks today. What’s more, they need to consider personalization as an on-going process – they need to learn from customer behaviour in order to ensure that offers reflect evolving needs and demands.

That’s where data analytics comes into play. MNOs need to be able to determine how user activity can be reflected in the services they offer. They need to be able to review habits, context, the times at which they access services and so on – and do so dynamically. It’s just like a supermarket loyalty card, which results in targeted offers based on your shopping history, or the way in Amazon presents products for you to consider based on browsing and purchasing habits.

In order to achieve this, MNOs need to be able to review the enormous quantities of data that traverse their network, in real-time. This requires the deployment of powerful processing engines that can interpret and filter relevant information from noise. Today’s DPI solutions need to be upgraded to meet this demand and to ensure that MNOs have the tools they need to be able to develop personalised service offers. The best way to achieve this cost-effectively is to take advantages in advances in hardware technology, so that the massive task of pre-processing relevant data can be handled without overloading host CPUs.

Such hardware technology can connect directly to optical transport at 10, 40 or even 100 Gb/s transmission rates. It performs filtering and processing of data to ensure that the policy engines are able to respond in real-time and to dynamically build personalized plans, learning from user behaviour and preferences.

Data analytics is going to be fundamental to the way in which MNOs launch and target services, ensuring that they develop ever-closer relationships with their customers. If they want to ensure their service packages are truly personalized, they must deploy the right tools to make sense of the relevant data, dynamically and in real-time.

Our product and technical experts are attending Mobile World Congress this year. They will be available to solve your network problems with in-depth, on-the-spot discussions.

• Find out why hardware acceleration is a must for packet processing applications, including DPI.

• Learn why network Policy engines depend on DPI for QoS delivery.

• Discover why true high-performance media processing needs scalable, reliable hardware – and why software is not the only answer.

• See STM1 to 40Gb/s high-speed media and packet processing cards in convenient PCIe form factors

• Discuss high-density media, IVR and signaling solutions for deployment in NGN / IN networks

Why not arrange a meeting with our consultants so we can discuss your needs and apply our expertise to solving your network challenges? Simply pre-book a meeting or call Callum Rasmussen on +44 1258 486518 to arrange a meeting.

Quality of Service (QoS) used to be a simple matter. In today’s IP-enabled world with a profusion of applications and vastly differing bandwidth requirements, it’s become a lot more complicated.

This makes life difficult for network operators – and the fact that demand is surging complicates matters further. Network operators are faced with the twin challenge of both massively increased demand and increasing application requirements. Delivering QoS to all users fairly and equally is tough.

Until recently, they have relied upon packet inspection solutions based on CPU power to ensure that problems can be identified and resolved. But keeping pace with demand makes this increasingly expensive. With core packet transport moving to 10Gb/s, 40Gb/s and beyond, the load on CPU-based systems will grow. This will dramatically increase the cost of such systems, increasing both CAPEX and OPEX and reducing profitability.

A better approach is to offload the pre-processing task to dedicated hardware resources. This reduces the load on the CPU and ensures that the system can scale effectively to cope with increased bandwidth in the future. There can be significant cost benefits – we estimate by as much as 50% at transmission rates of 40Gb/s. What’s more, the adoption of hardware acceleration solutions can ensure the QoS delivery across an entire network.

This is essential, as QoS is the key to customer satisfaction. If customers can’t access the services they want, or if they don’t perform as expected, they will migrate to networks that offer better performance. QoS is going to become a differentiator for network operators and increasingly selective users will search for solutions that deliver what they need.

A recent article has highlighted some of the problems that Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) face when attempting to manage traffic in their network.

Traffic management is needed for a variety of reasons. First, quality of service needs to be maintained – both for the network overall and for individual customers. Secondly, with MNOs increasingly offering packages that set limits to data consumption, they need to be able to monitor usage of individual users to ensure that they do not exceed a given quota or that they are billed appropriately if they do so.

Thirdly, there may be restrictions on the use of certain applications, because the MNO or regulator has a specific policy or because there is a legal reason preventing access. Fourthly, there may be specific policies that need to be enforced – for example, if users pay for a high-performance service, the MNO must be able to deliver the required level of performance to the subscribers. And, fifthly, users need fair access to bandwidth – those that over-consume may be subject to temporary restrictions, ensuring that bandwidth is available for other users. We could go on, but it’s clear that traffic management is absolutely critical to the smooth operation and performance of the network.

And that’s why MNOs need the tools to ensure that they can review traffic and manage network demands in real-time. Deep packet inspection technology is critical to this. And with transmission rates increasing all the time, it’s a struggle to keep up. MNOs need DPI solutions that can scale effectively and cope with continually increasing traffic flows.

The volume of data and the rate at which it is transmitted just keep on growing. Traditional DPI equipment will be overwhelmed by this flow of data, as it relies in CPU-based technology for processing the data. A better solution is to perform the pre-processing at the level of hardware, ensuring that only packets of interest are sent to the control application. This means that the pressure on CPUs is alleviated, ensuring the DPI application can perform as expected.

After all, DPI is now fundamental to ensure network performance, to meet customer expectations and to ensure fair access to data for all. Quite simply, without DPI, MNOs would be unable to manage their networks.

Until relatively recently, networks used a wide range of signaling protocols – and achieving interoperability was often a considerable challenge. Today, networks are migrating towards an all-IP architecture and SIP has emerged as the standard protocol for control of media sessions.

Unlike SS7 in the circuit switched world, it’s not just deployed in the core. It reaches directly to the enterprise, thanks to SIP trunking and IP call control products. But IP connections are vulnerable to attack in a way that circuit switched networks were not. But service providers and their customers – enterprises and consumers alike – both expect and demand the same levels of security. Just because the transport and architecture is different, there’s no reason why networks should be less secure.

But they are, as IP is vulnerable to all manner of threats. This is why technologies such as Deep Packet Inspection have become essential, as a recent article points out. In order to protect networks, the ability to inspect and authorise packets is mandatory and this can only be achieved by looking directly at higher-layer packets conveyed in IP streams.

DPI has been much misunderstood. In reality, it’s an essential tool that helps protect network integrity and prevent malicious attacks such as denial of service. With all SIP networks, DPI is a key tool to ensure that customers enjoy the service they expect.

And of course, the rapid growth in SIP traffic means that there are more and more packets to consider. 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s optical transport networks convey significant volumes of data. The integrity of each packet must be checked in order to ensure the security of the network. This flow is beyond the capability of first-generation software-based DPI engines. To cope with these volumes of traffic, only hardware-based DPI solutions have the capacity to ensure 100% data capture and zero packet loss.

It’s that time of year when forecasts are made and one theme that has popped up in several articles is that of Customer Experience Management. 2012, it seems, is going to be the year when the CEM bandwagon accelerates. But CEM encompasses two elements – experience of the network; that is, how it performs; and contact with the service provider; that is, how the provider deals with the customer and handles that interaction.

Network performance is always a challenge. Operators must constantly be vigilant, ensuring that traffic flows smoothly and without disruption. But to achieve this is no simple task. Operators are reliant on Deep Packet Inspection capabilities to monitor traffic and generate essential data. Is traffic flowing at the desired rate? Are latency, jitter and other key metrics being maintained at the appropriate levels? Can the network cope with peaks and troughs, caused by irregular usage patterns?

Today’s DPI solutions risk being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data traversing the network. Traditional, CPU-based solutions lack the scale and performance to cope with the huge surge in user traffic and the high-speed links that are now migrating to 40Gb/s and beyond. That’s why dedicated hardware is required.

By performing packet-processing, the core task of DPI applications, hardware-based solutions can ensure that all traffic is inspected with no packet loss. Instead of flooding CPU-based equipment, hardware solutions can scale to meet growth in traffic and ensure that DPI functions can be performed consistently and reliably. And this is essential – to deliver on CEM promises, the network must be able to provide the information operators need to ensure smooth operation.

Both elements of CEM are important and both present challenges, but ensuring that the network performs as expected is fundamental. Operators need the confidence that scalable, hardware-based packet processing engines can provide if CEM is really going to take off this year.

Find out how hardware acceleration solves packet processing issues in network trouble-shooting and DPI applications

Network delays can have a significant impact on customer experience. As more and more users take advantage of services that have increasing demands on network bandwidth, the issue of network delays that impact service performance will become increasingly important.

That’s why network operators are deploying sophisticated DPI solutions to troubleshoot network issues. But, today’s 10Gb/s and emerging 40Gb/s networks can overload traditional host-based DPI solutions. That’s why hardware acceleration is required, to offload host processor requirements. Find out more by downloading our new white paper – Using Hardware Accelerated 10-40Gb/s Packet Analysis in IMS Policy Applications.

Network delay problems affect all users. For consumers, rapidly adopting services that require real-time performance – such as online gaming, for example – network delays will disrupt and damage their experience, leading to dissatisfaction.

For enterprise users, the adoption of cloud services – of which more and more will have real-time performance requirements, such as video conferencing and collaboration – delays will degrade service and impact the efficiencies and cost savings that such cloud services are supposed to introduce.

In both cases, there is the additional complication of user expectation. People expect services to work in both a mobile and fixed environment, seamlessly. Their perceptions have changed and people don’t expect there to be a difference between what they can do on their mobile device and on their fixed terminal.

This means that network operators have to be able to identify and resolve delay issues before they have a significant impact on service performance and delivery. Customer dissatisfaction leads to churn – and with customer acquisition costs so high, it makes sense to focus on strategies to retain customers.

But where is the delay to be found? Does the problem occur in the access network? In the cable head-end? In the cell-site? The backhaul? The core? Network operators have to be able to identify problems wherever they occur. They have to be able to sample traffic, selectively filter media streams and run analysis to determine if a problem exists and isolate the area in which it is found so that they can take action.

With NGN networks running at 10Gb/s, 40Gb/s and beyond, this is not a trivial issue: there is simply a vast trove of data to be processed – and it has to be analysed in real-time. It’s a real-time world now and that demands high-performance network processors and monitoring systems for DPI applications.

In an ideal world, there would never be any problems; there would always be sufficient bandwidth to cope. But it’s not an ideal world – problems occur on a regular basis, despite best efforts and advances in network provisioning and planning. That’s why network operators need the ability to perform DPI, monitor traffic flows at all points in the network and aggregate results so the full picture can be realised.

Investing in high-speed monitoring capabilities for DPI applications is essential to ensure that existing customers receive the quality of service they expect. And, if you want to add customers, being able to differentiate on service quality may just be a significant asset. The benefits of being able to monitor traffic throughout the network are clear – and it’s a fundamental requirement to be able to adapt to the next generation of transmission speeds. The message is clear: if you want to find hidden delays, you need the right equipment and the ability to cope with the faster line rates delivered by core transmission solutions.

Find out how to build and deploy advanced solutions to manage and monitor your network by contacting Telesoft Technologies today.