February 8th, 2011 by Cam Cullen; Category: Industry, Technology
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    I have been around the world (in some cases, in a single trip!) to meet with existing Procera customers and interested prospects on our solution. During a recent trip, a coworker made an offhand comment after we met a customer that stuck with me. “The Internet is a big place.”

    The moment he said that, it really brought home something to me that had been creeping into my thinking during the trip. During the trip, I met with customers, prospects, resellers, and analysts in several different countries, and there was one consistent theme that I took away from those meetings: Every customer is a little bit different. Different parts of the world have different needs, and although the network diagrams may be similar, just as in a city, different neighborhoods have different needs. Read more [+]

    January 11th, 2011 by Cam Cullen; Category: Uncategorized
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      As a follow-up to my blog on streaming video, I have been doing a lot of work with customers to understand the new world that network providers operate in. Both mobile and fixed networks are seeing a tremendous change in traffic patterns that reflect the new “normal” in how consumers utilize broadband connectivity. I have looked extensively at the reports generated by our customers on their network traffic (spanning Cable, DSL, FTTx, Mobile, and Higher Education networks), and have come to the conclusion that the new normal is dramatically different than the old normal.

      The New Normal:

      1. Consumers have multiple active devices on their broadband connection.
      2. Home networks are multi-tasking, even if individual devices are not always multi-tasking.
      3. More consumers are dependent on information and activities occurring “in the cloud”
      4. Some applications are more important than others, even to consumers Read more [+]
      December 21st, 2010 by James Brear; Category: Industry, Products, Technology
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        Today, the FCC passed a ruling that creates a Network Neutrality framework and provides guidance on “acceptable” practices for broadband service providers. There are several key tenets that we take away from the ruling, which have very positive implications for Procera.

        1) Application blocking is prohibited for lawful applications and content – because providers already follow this standard in the US, this is not a big change. This does, however, imply that there is an opportunity for service providers to block unlawful applications or content in the future (child pornography for example), either by default or as an opt-in service.

        2) Transparency is a must – to achieve transparency providers must disclose their network management procedures. This has become a common practice since the beginning of the Network Neutrality debate and will not be a big change for major providers. Read more [+]

        November 24th, 2010 by Cam Cullen; Category: Industry, Technology
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          There has been lots of talk lately on how video is now the most significant application on the Internet. As a memorable song from the 1970’s says, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

          Video has been the main bandwidth driver on the Internet for a long time. When filesharing was first introduced, music files were definitely the initial draw. But as broadband proliferated and the DivX codec was introduced, video became the filetype of choice for filesharing. Video has evolved from delayed gratification (i.e. download and wait) to the now ubiquitous streaming video. Over the past few years, YouTube and Hulu have become staples for video afficianados, and the introduction of smartphones and mobile broadband have exploded the accessibility of streaming video beyond just the PC. Over the past year, Netflix (at least in the US) has become a growing force in the entertainment field, and now has support for a wide variety of hardware platforms, ranging from gaming consoles, DVD/BluRay players, Internet connected TVs, and dedicated streaming systems. Apple TV and Google TV are also coming on the scene, and the fun is just getting started for broadband providers. Read more [+]

          October 19th, 2010 by Cam Cullen; Category: Industry, Technology
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            Congestion Management is a topic that comes up in almost all of our high level discussions with service providers world-wide. This topic came up a few weeks ago with a customer, and one of their potential solutions to determining how their network was performing caught my attention. The system that they were looking at to determine if they were providing the promised bandwidth to customers, determining if there was congestion on the network, and measuring the “application experience” for customers was an active probe that sent data from the customer premise to the network core with a number of different protocols and data rates. Based on the network performance for that probe, their success or failure would be determined. Although this solution is technically capable of providing this information, I am not convinced that this type of solution is a good one, because the solution itself is a potential source of problems (both for the customer and the network). Read more [+]

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