AAA global hardware scalability e-commerce MMS JavaScript video managed hosting capacity acceleration optimization encryption replication access IMS gateway SNMP firewall WAN consolidation LTE irules storage tiering rate shaping agility switch intelligence intrusion detection unified access reverse SaaS stream code download offloading open source traffic virtualization-ready anti-phishing syslog technology anti-virus NGIN VPN DNS email application delivery computing disaster recovery provisioning CPU HTTP redirect XHTML protocol HTML VoIP wiki dynamic infrastructure DMZ icontrol enterprise HTTPS policy plug-in SSL software decryption data center denial of service source persistence security application security web 4G services cloud computing proxy architecture server persistence SNAT development F5 Solutions for scalable value added mobile services compression asymmetric remote access symmetric automated tiering best practices performance IPTV availability pool backup web 2.0 bandwidth infrastructure redirect blog business continuity caching content XSS convergence HSS cookie SIP adaptability apps CSS browser IPsec database 3G
F5 solutions help mobile network operators create the robust and scalable architecture that is essential for delivering exciting new services to millions of subscribers. Ten out of the top ten fixed and mobile network operators use F5 products. Find out why.
Overview Over the course of just a few short years, the business landscape for mobile network operators has changed almost beyond recognition. In the not so distant past, systems were geared purely for the transmission of voice packets. Today, mobile network operators need to deliver email, Internet browsing, video, multimedia games, images and a vast array of web-based applications. Growth in the popularity of hand held communications devices, such as the iphone, are fuelling a surge in mobile subscriber numbers and unprecedented growth in demand for exciting new web-based services. Around the world, mobile network operators of all sizes are coming to terms with the need to create an entirely different business model and the mobile infrastructure to support it. Challenges exist in two key areas. Firstly, mobile network operators need to upgrade their core infrastructure to enable them to support both increased subscriber numbers and the explosion in new services. Essentially this means planning and implementing a migration to IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the industry s new architectural framework for delivering Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia services over mobile networks. Secondly, mobile network operators have to respond to the demand for media rich content and exploit the emerging business opportunities associated with it. The current economic climate is adding to the pressure for carriers. The increasing demand for bandwidth comes right at a time when intense price competition is driving down average revenue per user (ARPU). Mobile network operators must act quickly to address bandwidth shortfalls and customer complaints. However, they also need to make prudent purchasing decisions that protect their existing infrastructure investment, contribute to sustainable cost savings and enable the delivery of profitable new services. F5 helps mobile network operators to build robust IMS infrastructures by: Maximising the use of existing bandwidth to support greater numbers of smartphones and data plans Minimising expenditure on additional servers and other network equipment Managing large traffic volumes securely across multiple data centres Scaling up and improving the reliability of Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) servers Controlling traffic according to business demands, service type and customer requirements F5 solutions support the delivery of media rich content by: Streaming video, high-definition video and applications over less bandwidth Scaling up instant messaging servers and MMS/SMS solutions to meet increased demand for real-time communication Ensuring high quality of service for subscribers Identifying the location of subscribers, so that carriers can offer location-based services Increasing revenue opportunities by delivering new services to specific groups of subscribers 3
IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) IMS has become the de facto infrastructure for 3G and 4G networks. Inherently open, it provides a common platform for merging cellular voice networks and the Internet. It is based on industry standards and provides a flexible platform for the delivery of next generation services. Most mobile network operators are already developing their IMS infrastructures, but alongside advantages, they are also encountering a number of critical challenges 4
Providing access for hundreds of millions of subscribers Many telecommunications providers are already concerned about how to meet the needs of their existing customers, given the constraints in their bandwidth capacity. Yet the number of subscribers worldwide is continuing to grow exponentially. It s a case of too much demand and constrained supply. interconnecting data centres. Our BIG-IP solutions improve bandwidth optimisation and efficiently handle the management of massive numbers of concurrent TCP/IP sessions. By deploying F5 products, mobile network operators can defer the purchase of further servers and networking equipment and instead maximise the value that they gain from their existing equipment. To increase bandwidth, mobile network operators are continuing to add more servers and more data centres, but costs are escalating. And, of course, the demands on bandwidth are only going to increase, as both existing and new subscribers start to make use of more and more converged services. Mobile network operators need to find creative ways to optimise their existing bandwidth and develop their IMS to provide network access for growing numbers of subscribers, with growing requirements. F5 helps to address this issue by maximising the available capacity in existing servers across the entire business in added value services data centres, in user access data centres and in F5 solutions work at all three core levels of the IMS architecture: the access level, the standards level and the application level. F5 solutions support the creation of a robust and scalable IMS across all three core levels of the architecture: the access level, the standards level and the application level IMS SERVICES VPN, 800, CONFERENCING & PORTABILITY VOIP, IM, PTT VIDEO CONFERENCE PRESENCE LOCATION VOICEMAIL MMS SMS EMS ETC. WEB / WAP, EMAIL, CALENDAR, PIM, ONLINE TRANSACTION, CONTENT SERVICES, GAMING VIDEO ON DEMAND PAY PER VIEW WIRELESS BCMC IP TV MIGRATION INTEGRATION IMS CORE INTERFACES IN SERVICES IMS SERVICES MESSAGING SERVICES WEB / WAP SERVICES STREAMING SERVICES - SIP - DIAMETER - TCAP - MAP - CAP - INAP - RTP CAP INAP TCAP DIAMETER SIP MM1 SMS WAP HTTP SMTP MIME IMAP RTP / RTSP IGMP BSS CORE INFRASTRUCTURE AND IP NETWORKS OSS APPLICATION CLIENTS 5
Ensuring the reliability of Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) infrastructure When the number of subscribers increases to the volume handled by many network operators today, core systems are placed under considerable strain. The servers in Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) infrastructures, in particular, can quickly become overloaded and can struggle to authenticate all user traffic as quickly as necessary. Many mobile network operators have to repeatedly replace or increase their AAA servers with larger ones, or segment their network to handle the higher volumes of traffic. But these are expensive solutions to a common and recurring problem. F5 s BIG-IP solution enables carriers to optimise the traffic throughput in their AAA infrastructure to achieve higher availability. It is not uncommon for operators to have 500 servers being used 20% of the time. BIG-IP balances traffic effectively across all available servers and ensures maximum utilisation. As a result, mobile network operators avoid the cost of additional servers and, at the same time, prevent an increase in associated power and cooling costs. Where scaling issues exist for AAA, F5 provides protocol-specific scaling profiles such as Diameter, Radius and LDAP. BIG-IP also allows network operators to take advantage of layer 7 traffic management. Given the criticality of the AAA infrastructure, carriers cannot afford downtime. Yet, for many organisations, AAA represents a potential single point of failure. The latest version of BIG-IP offers carrier-class availability with a new, Fast Failover capability that reduces failover times to fractions of a second. F5 s VIPRION chassis is engineered to handle massive volumes of revenue-generating traffic and is ideal for supporting AAA infrastructures. It carries PB 200 blades, and more capacity can be added on demand to provide the throughput needed for today and the future. Mobile network operators can add servers to their AAA infrastructure as required, without disruption to user authentication or loss of revenue from interrupted billing. 6
F5 s VIPRION is a single-box solution for increasing the scale and performance of AAA infrastructures 7
8 F5 s TMOS architecture allows subscribers to use multiple services on multiple different networks, via a single access point
Providing appropriate services for different groups of subscribers Soon there will be an almost infinite choice of services available, but not all customers will want to (or indeed should) have access to all of them. A key challenge for telecommunications providers, therefore, is how to dynamically route traffic according to specific subscriber profiles. Mobile network operators need to be able to route traffic through the network, giving each individual subscriber access to precisely the services that he or she has paid for or is authorised to access. F5 BIG-IP solutions provide subscriber analytics to help network operators carry out customer profiling. They can also return information about each individual subscriber s traffic, if required. As a result, operators can use F5 to identify any subscribers who may not be on the best tariff and offer them a more appropriate contract to deliver better customer service. Operators can also identify customers preferred services and offer them other similar services to increase revenue opportunities. This is a particularly important issue, given that growing numbers of children now use mobile communications devices. In many countries, it is becoming a legal requirement for mobile network operators to be able to identify minors and restrict their access to inappropriate services. F5 offers the only policy-based traffic steering solution that provides dynamic services for routing subscriber traffic according to that subscriber s profile. This capability and others like it is enabled by F5 s irules event-driven scripting language and icontrol, an open Application Programming Interface (API). Lying at the heart of all of F5 s solutions, irules and icontrol enable network managers to specify precisely how mobile traffic is intercepted, inspected, directed and transformed. All of F5 s products share an operating system, called TMOS, which enables intelligent network control. Using TMOS, F5 has designed an architecture that allows mobile network operators to give subscribers access to multiple services on multiple different networks, via a single access point. The F5 devices use deep packet inspection techniques and dynamically route traffic, according to the profiles set, through the different networks. Mobile network operators will have different data centres around the world and will not necessarily offer all of the same services from each data centre. F5 s BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) solution can be used to identify where each individual subscriber is calling from, what services he or she has signed up for and which is the best data centre to route the traffic to. This will not just be the closest data centre; rather it will be the closest data centre that offers the required services and is not over-subscribed at this particular point in time. WHERE THE GTM FITS IN THE TOPOLOGY BSC RNC BTS NODE B SMSC SERVING GPRS SUPPORT NODE (SGSN 2G OR 3G) SS7 NETWORK HLR/AUC EIR CORPORATE 1 SERVER GTM BILLING SYSTEM FIREWALL BORDER GATEWAY (BG) GPRS BACKBONE NETWORK (IP BASED) CHARGING GATEWAY (CG) FIREWALL DATA NETWORK (INTERNET) ROUTER LOCAL AREA NETWORK CORPORATE 2 SERVER INTER-PLMN NETWORK GPRS INFRASTRUCTURE LAWFUL INTERCEPTION GATEWAY (LIG) GATEWAY GPRS SUPPORT NODE (GGSN) FIREWALL DATA NETWORK (INTERNET) ROUTER LOCAL AREA NETWORK 9
Media rich content delivery The possibilities are almost endless. 3G, 4G and the networks of the future make it possible for carriers to deliver rich, high quality video and images to a wide variety of portable consumer devices. Mobile phone users are quickly developing an appetite for applications, games and films that they can access from anywhere, at any time. For the mobile network operators that can deliver these exciting new applications and media rich services, there is money to be made. But it s not just about coming up with a cool new idea. It s about being able to deliver a consistently high quality experience for users, while protecting profit margins. And that presents further challenges. 10
Content delivery challenges and F5 solutions: Delivering richer content, without escalating costs It s not simply about giving all subscribers the best bandwidth that is available, because that will be prohibitively expensive. Instead, mobile network operators have to be able to offer subscribers precisely the amount of bandwidth that they need, for the services they use, when they want to use them and at a price point they are prepared to pay. subscriber s web request might be routed to an appropriate acceleration device to reduce server delay. F5 therefore intelligently manages subscriber traffic across circuits to deliver richer content and a better customer experience. Whatever the challenges of delivering richer content, F5 s TMOS operating system and the irules programming interface provide simple solutions. Together, they provide the ability for mobile network operators to build solutions that are functionally effective and operationally efficient yet also administratively very simple. When the market moves, organisations can react quickly, make decisions about how to direct traffic, launch new 4G offerings and solve problems more easily. With the greater operational insight and flexibility afforded by F5 solutions, carriers can grow quickly, wisely and economically. F5 s BIG-IP provides information to the carrier about how much bandwidth is being used even down to individual subscriber level. This information then enables the organisation to provision the network appropriately, and allocate the right amount of bandwidth to those subscribers who need it, minute by minute. Through the use of F5-enabled policy-based traffic steering, a subscriber s video traffic would be routed to the appropriate server for that subscriber s level of service. However, that VOD IN MEDIA SYSTEMS O&M AND CORPORATE NETWORKS CENTRAL SERVICES CENTER ACCESS NETWORK TV HEAD-END MULTICAST TRANSPORT NETWORK TRANSPORT NETWORK MANAGEMENT VPN CONTROL VPN MULTICAST C.D. VPN MULTICAST VPN LSC ROUTER 1 PROBE 1 PROBE 2 AUDIENCES VPN LSC ROUTER 2 MULTICAST C.D. STREAMING CONTROL RTSP CONTROL LCDS 1 y 2 SAL VoDS 1 TV-PROBE MM-PROBE LCDS 1 y 2 UNICAST VPN PVR RECORDING VoDS n VoDS (PVR) VIDEO SERVERS HUB MANAGEMENT LOCAL SERVICE CENTER 11
12 With its automatic failover and intelligent traffic management capabilities, F5 solutions ensure a high quality experience for subscribers
Ensuring consistently high quality of service for video streaming Quality of service (QoS) or, as it is increasingly being termed, Quality of Experience (QoE) will be the new battle ground for mobile network operators. While price will remain an important means of attracting new customers, these subscribers will quickly change their network and service provider if their experience doesn t live up to their expectations. Some mobile network providers have been offering limited streaming services for quite some time. However, with the increasing popularity of devices such as the iphone and Blackberry, subscribers are no longer just content with streaming YouTube clips and short how to tutorials. They want to follow live sports coverage and even watch the latest movie blockbusters on their phones. What is more, if they cannot see the latest World Cup football match, in clear quality, as it happens, they will be quick to complain. Mobile network operators therefore have to be able to deliver enough bandwidth to meet subscribers expectations and needs. This means differentiating between those subscribers who are streaming video and those who are making a voice call, using email or sending an image via SMS. F5 s BIG-IP products help mobile network operators to serve images and sound properly because they understand the type of client that each customer is using and serve the most appropriate format of content for the client. F5 solutions can also help mobile network operators cope with peak time usage and spikes in demand, such as during sports finals and following unexpected world events. After all, a service that works perfectly for five thousand concurrent customers could easily fail for 50 thousand. BIG-IP helps network operators to grow efficiently their service capabilities at short notice and furnish users with the same quality of service, regardless of whether there is low or high demand. In the event of an unexpected fault in a service or failure at a data centre, BIG-IP solutions automatically detect outages and instantly reconnect users to another service source that can guarantee the supply of the image, video or other service, whether that is from a server in the same data centre or indeed another data centre. In this way, F5 helps to guarantee the continuation of service and contributes to high levels of customer satisfaction. MOBILE SERVICES INFRASTRUCTURE HSS IMS DATA HLR/AuC ( C5/P5 ) SLF AS SIP AS IM SSF OSA SCS APPLICATIONS SIP AS OSA AS CAMEL SE KEY IMS SESSION SIGNALLING IMS USER PLANE DATA SERVICE/APPLICATIONS LAYER CSCF BGCF S-CSCF I-CSCF P-CSCF MGCF NASS SPDF/A-RACF SGW CS NETWORKS (PSTN, CS PLMN) IMS LAYER UE DSLAM BAS 3GPP R7/TISPAN R1 PDF MRF MRFC IMS GW ALG IMS-MGW IPv4 PDN (IPv4 Network) UE 3GPP R6 WLAN WAG WLAN PDG MRFP TrGW UE 3GPP R5 RAN SGSN GCSN PEF BB (IP v4/ipv6) BG IPv6 PDN (IPv6 Network) TRANSPORT LAYER 13
Responding to growing demand for real-time messaging Most large mobile network operators offer a proprietary instant messaging platform that enables its subscribers to engage in real-time communications using their hand-held devices. However, these platforms are starting to show signs of strain. All around the world, consumers are upgrading their mobile handsets and gaining access to instant messaging capabilities for the first time. Carriers are therefore attracting growing numbers of instant messaging users and it s not just one or two new users a month; it s thousands. The use of F5 s BIG-IP solutions can help to off load some of the burden from instant messaging servers, enabling them to handle more users more efficiently. In many countries, mobile network operators have a legal requirement to store all instant messages for a fixed period of time. Other organisations offer message archives as a user feature. As user numbers grow, and the frequency of usage increases, carriers will need to expand their storage capacity. As a result of this steady increase in demand for instant messaging, many carriers are having to review their existing systems and formulate strategies to substantially upgrade them or even completely replace them with more robust and scalable systems that can handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. But such a drastic course of action may not be necessary. F5 file virtualisation solution ARX simplifies data management further by providing automated, policy-based management across heterogeneous storage environments. The end result is reduced storage expenditures and management overhead, and accelerated business workflows. AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ARX SOLUTIONS CAN SIMPLIFY ACCESS TO DATA WITH FILE VIRTUALISATION APPLICATIONS AND USERS APPLICATIONS AND USERS STATIC MAPPINGS/ MOUNT POINTS IP NETWORK ARX INTELLIGENT FILE VIRTUALISATION NAS AND FILE SERVERS UNIFIED STORAGE POOL NetApp HP EMC 2 IBM SUN DELL Windows Linux NetApp HP EMC 2 IBM SUN DELL Windows Linux Before ARX Current file storage environment After ARX File storage environment with intelligent file virtualisation 14
The use of F5 s BIG-IP solutions can help to offload some of the burden from instant messaging servers, enabling them to handle more users more efficiently 15
16 F5 solutions can control traffic according to business demands, service type and customer requirements
An intelligent architecture By placing F5 solutions at the very heart of their mobile delivery network architecture, carriers will realise benefits right across their business. They will improve bandwidth utilisation to deliver a better service to existing subscribers and facilitate the delivery of innovative media rich services to attract to new subscribers. At the same time, they will improve return on their existing investment in infrastructure, which allows cost efficient business growth. As explained in the previous pages and illustrated in the architecture diagram below, our solutions: Scale AAA systems and facilitate custom handling of messages Provide intelligent load balancing with built-in profiles to address requirements in RADUIS, LDAP and DIAMETER Steer traffic according to subscriber policy information supplied by AAA systems or third party policy decision systems Improve bandwidth utilisation Perform subscriber traffic analyses Offer advanced network connection management capabilities that solve many system routing and incompatibility challenges. ARCHITECTURE REDUNDANT F5 LTM FOR HA, SCALABILITY, DPI ENGINE & POLICY ENFORCEMENT POINT 3G OPERATOR OSS/BSS SERVICES VIPRION WiMax 4G GGSN DPI ENGINE VIPRION INTERNET SITES CONTENT LTE KEY POLICY COMMUNICATION OPTIMIZED TRAFFIC AAA SERVICES NON-OPTIMIZED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT TRAFFIC AAA SERVICES: RADIUS, DIAMETER, LDAP MOBILE INTERNET SERVICES PLATFORM LOGGING SERVERS HIGH-SPEED LOGGING 17
Summary F5 solutions: Scale effortlessly to handle millions of subscribers Contribute to a lower total cost of IT ownership Maximise the available bandwidth in existing systems Enable subscriber profiling and the delivery of new revenue-generating services Ensure high quality customer experience Can scale capacity and perform ahead of customer demand Provide intelligent traffic steering Help to cope with data traffic explosion Improve organisations profitability Are easy to deploy About F5: F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5 s flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5 s vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. EMEA Seatle Americas Japan APAC GLOBAL OPERATIONS International HQ Regional HQ / support centre Product development F5 regional office 18
Find out more at: www.f5.com/solutions/ industry/telecom/
AAA global hardware scalability e-commerce MMS JavaScript video managed hosting capacity acceleration optimization encryption replication access IMS gateway SNMP firewall WAN consolidation LTE irules storage tiering rate shaping agility switch intelligence intrusion detection unified access reverse SaaS stream code download offloading open source traffic virtualization-ready anti-phishing syslog technology anti-virus NGIN VPN DNS email application delivery computing disaster recovery provisioning CPU HTTP redirect XHTML protocol HTML VoIP wiki dynamic infrastructure DMZ icontrol enterprise HTTPS policy plug-in SSL software decryption data center denial of service source persistence security application security web 4G services cloud computing proxy architecture server persistence SNAT development compression asymmetric remote access symmetric automated tiering best practices performance IPTV availability pool backup web 2.0 bandwidth infrastructure redirect blog business continuity caching content XSS convergence HSS cookie SIP adaptability apps CSS browser IPsec database 3G F5 Networks, Inc. 401 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119 888-882-4447 www.f5.com F5 Networks, Inc. Corporate Headquarters info@f5.com F5 Networks Asia-Pacific info.asia@f5.com F5 Networks Ltd. Europe/Middle-East/Africa emeainfo@f5.com F5 Networks Japan K.K. f5j-info@f5.com 2010 F5 Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. F5, F5 Networks, the F5 logo, ARX, BIG-IP, GTM, icontrol, irules, TMOS and VIPRION are trademarks or registered trademarks of F5 Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and in certain other countries.