Posts Tagged ‘deep packet inspection’

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Taking PacketLogic to School…

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Over the past twelve months, Procera has experienced great successes in the Higher Education market across the globe. Although there are a number of contributing factors to this achievement, a few reasons have really begun to stand out in our minds as to why we have been so successful in this space.

Higher Education institutions around the world have quickly realized that their networks are a critical component in their success, ensuring that the bandwidth is managed properly and that the students have access to the resources that they need to succeed in the classroom is critical. The cost of this bandwidth can quickly spiral out of control, as students will use every bit of available bandwidth – “Just because it is there”. Since all applications do not have the same performance or latency requirements from the network, it makes sense to ensure that real-time applications (VOIP, conferencing, video, etc.) have the necessary bandwidth needed to operate effectively, and congestion on the Internet link is very common. The available bandwidth to universities has dramatically increased over the past few years, to the point where many require not just 1Gbps of network performance, but even up to 10Gbps of capacity of traffic management, and they have outgrown their existing traffic management solutions.

In the United States, there is even a mandate called the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) that instructs Higher Education institutions to take action to help control illegal file sharing. Procera has helped many higher education institutions comply with the HEOA by helping them effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials by allowing them to control the use of file sharing technologies on their network – typically a huge contributor to network congestion and bandwidth usage. It has also saved many University CIOs from receiving letters from the MPAA and RIAA about the copyright violations occurring on their network, not to mention helped pare back their overhead by reducing the number of DMCA take-down notices they receive

From our perspective, Higher Education institutions are the breeding ground for new and exciting applications. Being installed in as many of these networks as possible keeps us at the forefront of application trends, as we have seen the use of streaming video, social networking applications, and VOIP/IM applications from around the world skyrocket in these environments, and they continue to keep our signature database ahead of competitors that do not have the same exposure and responsiveness to the Higher Education customer base. We have also benefited from these customers’ deployments as they are often more sophisticated in their use of policies to control bandwidth than even some service providers, so they give PacketLogic a good workout and ensure that our solutions maintain performance and visibility under even heavy loads. We have also experienced good feedback on our implementations of IPv6, which are becoming more and more critical to research universities and international consortiums, as IPv6 has become more prevalent on Internet2 links. We strongly believe that IPv6 will become more critical to networks around the world, and are working to provide the leading IPv6-aware traffic management solution on the market.

Besides, how can you have an “Intelligent” enforcement solution without going to school every once in awhile? We learn something new every day at Procera, and it is often our education customers that teach us that lesson.

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Cloudy with a Chance of Internet Showers

Monday, March 14th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

The Cloud” has been a hot topic in the technology space for some time now, with the term becoming so mainline that many companies are using it as a tagline in mainstream advertising (ala Microsoft with their “To the cloud!” campaign). With “The Cloud”, the thinking goes; I can just have my data readily available for access, regardless of my device, location, or access technology. I can always access my pictures (everyone certainly wants to see my pictures of my family vacation!), my documents or spreadsheets, check my balance in my checking account, and my contact database.

Great idea! But what if the cloud is not accessible? Or your access to the cloud is so bad that it might as well be offline?

The concept of the cloud is a great security blanket. It’s like never having to worry about leaving your keys locked in your car or forgetting your wallet when you need it the most. Information is always available, and you can call it up on a moment’s notice. I had a personal experience with the beauty of the cloud this weekend, when I was in New York City that kind of drove home how expectations have changed with respect to access to the Internet. I took the train to NYC, using the on-board Wi-Fi to do work during the ride. I was, you see, trying to access the cloud so that I could have access to salesforce.com, as welI as participate in an online chat conference with some colleagues. I decided on the train as my mode of transport due to the availability of Internet Access and planned to get work done on the train ride. However, the connection was so bad and overloaded, that getting any online work done became impossible. However, the cloud did not fail me completely, as I also have an Android phone, and I can use that phone as a mobile hotspot, which since it supports an HSPA connection, is highly effective in emergency cases, and I was able to complete what I needed to get done (although just barely in a few cases, as occasionally I would drop into 3G or even EDGE areas where access slowed to a crawl.

I have seen and heard of many cases of consumers behaving in a business role (think travelers or telecommuters) that have suffered due to their connectivity and as a result, their companies and businesses have suffered. I know that many companies would be willing (even eager) if they could pay HIGHER amounts for broadband access for some of their employees to ensure that the latest sales forecasts, material orders, or even POs could be placed. Or in the case that I described above, to use more data in emergency cases and pay a bundled daily usage charge (or a reduced rate data package). If I am tethering my phone to my PC, some of the mobile data packages available today are woefully inadequate for even a single day’s work and email (It feels as if I get 1G of data in just email alone some days, much less add web browsing where some pages are 1MB alone – I am looking at you Yahoo with your front page), and a 250MB per month allowance is not sufficient.

Even in the US, where a lot of attention is being paid to tiered services and usage-based pricing models, allowances are made for “managed” services. More options should exist for data plans targeted towards mobile business professionals, as since the bills for these services are subsidized by corporations, the user is not acting as a consumer when they purchase the plan. I have always believed that even flat rate access can be tiered, and I know that if my company could pay to make sure that I had better access for my business traffic as part of my service plan they would be willing to. For example:

  • Prioritize my VPN traffic (even if it requires IP address destination-based rules)
  • Prioritize traffic to SF.com
  • Prioritize IM (which is critical for me to communicate quickly, succinctly, and cheaply with colleagues around the world)
  • Prioritize email access to my corporate server
  • Prioritize access to my file drop-box service (which I sometimes need to use to transfer large presentations, documents, or software versions).
  • And maybe most importantly – GIVE ME A BETTER RATE FOR ROAMING DATA!

Although I would use more bandwidth in the above case, this is offset by a willingness to pay more for this access on an ongoing basis (or as the last point makes, on a per usage basis for roaming). Roaming access to the cloud is completely unacceptable (especially overseas), as often just opening up email exceeds the $50 limit that is set in most countries for user notification.

As broadband providers are consistently looking for ways to generate more revenue, I suggest looking to the business user and offering us plans that would enhance our Quality of Experience – not just with quality access to the internet, but also quality of billing experience. Many users are very willing to pay more for access, and the opportunity is there for you to take advantage of that by offering plans that deliver.

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A World In Motion

Monday, February 14th, 2011 by Jon Linden

Did you notice the change? I know it’s subtle. But yes, you’re right, the Procera tagline changed to “Policy Enforcement In Motion”. Why? Well, there are a lot of good reasons. Let me try and explain.

Change is good. Everyone in this industry must embrace change, or get out. I’ve been with Procera for ten years now (wow, that made me sound like a dinosaur), but it feels like I’ve been at several different companies in many different industries. That’s how much things have changed over these ten years. Still, I would argue that we’ve stuck to our path, which has rendered us the technology leadership position in our segment.

So, what is our segment? That’s the key question, and we must continuously ensure that our messaging and technology is contemporary and up to date. The first question I got at a panel discussion in London this Fall was “what is the biggest change in DPI over the last five years?” My answer was that “DPI has evolved from being an autonomous product resolving a particular issue, mainly rampaging P2P traffic volumes, to becoming fully integrated into policy management.”

This integration is not just in network diagrams. It’s also integration into a complete ecosystem – the Policy and Charging Control (PCC) ecosystem. We’ve been evangelizing tiered services for years now, but it wasn’t until mobile operators started seeing large traffic volumes and serious revenue contribution from data services that this took off. And with these new demands came new requirements, and suddenly we had policy control, policy enforcement, online charging and more.

In this context, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is not a fair and complete description of what we do. We’re certainly not shying away from the fact that DPI is the core technology that gives us, and our fellow competitors, our competitive edge by associating type of traffic with subscriber, service plan, location and device. But ‘everyone’ claims to have DPI today, which is why policy enforcement is a much better description of what we actually do. And to make us justice in comparison with dumber equipment that enforces policies – like GGSNs – it’s fair to say Intelligent Policy Enforcement. Voilá, there you go, another three-letter acronym: IPE!

The applications enabled by the solution IPE are the same as before. The value proposition is around business intelligence, network optimization, network protection and tiered services. But as a component in the PCC ecosystem we can do more, and we can do it better. We can make our visions become reality and have a serious impact on bottom-line for service providers who are evolving, who innovate, and who are wiling to try new things to provide a better and sexier service to their customers. A necessity in today’s highly competitive hyper-connected society where everyone must check emails and Facebook at least every two minutes to ensure that they have not missed something important.

We, just like our customers, evolve – or move ahead. But in motion is also a word game to point out that the mobile operators drive these new requirements. We are the incumbent IPE vendor to some of the most prevailing mobile operators in the world. We’ve learnt, through real-life experience, how these operators function and what they need.

So, now you know why we do intelligent policy enforcement (IPE) based on advanced deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, to mobile operators that constantly evolve to accommodate customers in motion in a hyper-connected world that keeps spinning. Or in other words, why we do Policy Enforcement In Motion. I’m off. Back to the MWC show floor again – a place where there’s certainly a lot of motion!

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The Internet is a Big Place!

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

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.

In the context of what I do for Procera (Product Management), what that means is that every network, every customer, every service offering, is a little bit different. Normally, in Product Management, your hope is that every customer needs exactly the same thing (which makes your life much easier when defining a product). Unfortunately, our Intelligent Policy Enforcement technology has so many different uses that we see variations of even some of the basic use cases. It also means that product specifications and network demands may mean that a product that appears to line up in basic specification is actually not the right solution for a customer.

For example, let’s look at an often ignored (or minimized) specification on application aware systems – session capacity and setup rate. All around the world, we are seeing a sharp increase in session usage as the era of “always-on” social networking takes effect. Mobile network session usage, which used to be minimal, has skyrocketed with the rise of iPhones and Android phones that are multitasking and constantly connected to the network. Applications and sites like foursquare, Facebook, Mixi (Japan), Renren (China), Twitter, and IM/VOIP clients are increasing the consumer’s urges to stay connected at all times to the Internet. In Asia, networks have very high session setup rates per user, mainly due to the proliferation of file sharing clients and their behavior. In Canada, the session usage per user is almost three times the normal usage in the United States due to more file sharing activity. I have seen a number of deployments fail due to session loads that overwhelm stateful aware systems, and not just during DOS attacks, but in basic system operation.

Another key metric is the number of subscribers supported on a single system. Across fixed and mobile networks in Europe and in fixed networks in the America, the number of subscribers per system that needs to be supported is lower due to the number of operators competing in a single geography. In mobile networks in Asia and the Americas, that number can skyrocket (think of the mobile subscriber counts for Verizon, ATT, NTT, and China Mobile) to millions per system. Understanding how systems can grow or scale subscribers and policy management deployments are critical, since as the subscriber count grows, so too does the signaling load from Radius and PCRFs. A system that supports 10M subscribers, but only 1000 transactions per second will fail in a deployment since it cannot maintain the provisioning rates required for subscriber management.

And then there is a key metric for deployments: reporting and visibility. As the number of subscribers and the amount of sessions increase, the amount of statistics collection and storage required by the system shoots up as well. The amount of traffic does not matter as much in this scenario as you might think, since a single subscriber with one application is really just one statistic item, but one subscriber with 1000 applications, even at very low rates, is 1000 statistics operations that need to be collected, written to disk, and then analyzed. In North America, network operators are very interested in the impact that Netflix and other over the top video has on their network, and they want that information collected not just as “video”, but are interested in what devices are used, what providers are popular, trend information over time, and many other variables so that they can better plan their peering strategies. Mobile operators want to understand the trend and applications for the use of social networks, as they want to offer service plans that are attractive to avid Facebook users. In South America and Asia, file sharing and YouTube are huge consumers of bandwidth, and operators want to make sure that their capital expenses for peering are not spent entirely to support this traffic types, and want to send that type of traffic over lower cost transit links.

Not to mention the biggest product question of all – what features are going to be activated? In many products, the more you do, the less performance and capacity the product has. This is especially true in the policy enforcement arena, and some products literally slow to a crawl when you activate certain functions. Although this is an expected result sometimes, it is important that when you are publishing your product specifications and testing products, make sure that you test it in the same way (and if possible at the same scale) that you intend to deploy it, as you may be surprised in some cases what happens when you move from the lab into production – sometimes unpleasantly so. It is very normal to have a system running in tap mode just as if it was going to be run on the production network to determine the real capabilities and performance of the system under load.

So where I am going with all this?

The Internet is a big place, and even though it is one Internet, it has neighborhoods that behave very differently, and make sure you buy the right product for your application. Every network is different, even if they look like the same network diagram. I certainly think that in most cases, Procera’s product can get the job done better than others, but at the end of the day, a network operator has a business to run, and their job is to make that network run as efficiently as possible, for their configuration. So before you buy, make sure you are getting what you want, don’t just buy because of numbers on spec sheets. Customer’s should behave as the old Burger King slogan used to go “Have it your way” – because your needs ARE different than other customers.

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FCC Net Neutrality Legislation Impact on Procera

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 by James Brear

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.

3) “Reasonable Network Management” is allowed – while allowing reasonable network management was expected, the FCC has not defined reasonable beyond no blocking of lawful applications and content using a transparent approach. It is important to recognize that managing congestion can be achieved in a number of ways, and the more network intelligence built into the service provider’s network  (which can be provided by Procera’s solutions), the more effectively the provider can deal with congestion. Our policy enforcement solutions provide more network management options than any other available solution; this bodes well for our installed base of customers.

4) Tiered Services are allowed – although allowing for tiered services might be controversial, the positive outcomes of tiered services should prevail. Service Providers can now create lower cost plans to expand the reach of broadband to those who cannot afford even the lowest cost plans available today, while raising the price for users that consume high volumes of data (and negatively affect the broadband experience for other users). This is no different than utility services in the US, such as electricity and water utilities, that bill based on usage, and there can be penalties for high usage during peak hours.

Although the ruling might not deliver what either side of the debate was hoping for, it does support continued investment in network infrastructure by providing opportunities for innovative service offerings while preventing providers from blocking lawful over-the-top services. It leaves providers with room to offer service plans that are designed explicitly for over-the-top video services (e.g., a different usage plan for video services that is separate from regular data services) that enable high-volume video consumers to continue to enjoy the abundance of video available over the Internet.

This ruling is positive for Procera by allowing our installed base of customers and new customers to take advantage of our industry-leading policy enforcement technology to create innovative service offerings that provide an opportunity for a return on continued investment in broadband network infrastructure.

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Holiday Gift of the Year: Streaming Video (Coming to a Home Near You This Holiday Season)

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 by Cam Cullen

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.

The market is being flooded this holiday season with “more connected” devices. Retailers that were initially hoping that 3D TVs would be the “Gift of Choice” have shifted their focus to hawking their Internet connected TVs for the holidays. “Ordinary” consumers will soon have multiple broadband connected devices in their home taking advantage of a plethora of streaming video-capable devices (the “Hyper-Connected” families already have this, but that is a topic for a future blog).  It is not unreasonable to expect that a well-connected home may simultaneously have a gaming console watching a Netflix movie, a smartphone watching YouTube, a tablet watching Hulu Plus, and a TV watching Google TV. I believe that this year will be a significant tipping point for video, as there are more devices available than ever before, and the available content is greater than ever before.

Broadband providers that have been struggling with video traffic already are in for a rude surprise on Christmas Day when all of these presents are opened and start to connect themselves to the Internet. Consumer electronics manufacturers are relying on the ability of the broadband connections to validate this market, and if the network fails to deliver, it could have a negative impact on the economy as a whole. No pressure at all.

Fortunately, the intelligence to understand the video traffic and to ensure that it has good quality is available on the market today. Just look up your local Procera sales representative.

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The Butterfly Effect Applied to the Internet: Google Instant

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 by Cam Cullen

There is a well-publicized metaphor called the Butterfly Effect that summarizes the effect of chaos theory by posing the idea that a butterfly’s wings can create tiny changes in the atmosphere that can cause a tornado somewhere in the world. Google recently introduced a feature called “Google Instant” for search optimization that may have the same type of effect on the Internet.

If you go to Google’s search page and begin to type in the search box, Google will take every letter that you type and return a full search result page as you type. For example, if you enter “t” in as the first letter, Google returns a page with the first entry as Target, and other associated Target web sites. Add a “w” as the second letter, and the search page result changes to Twitter, with a number of associated Twitter sites. Add another “il” and suddenly you are transported to the world of Twilight, Stephanie Meyer’s successful vampire love story. Interestingly enough, The Twilight search page has picture and video thumbnails and graphic returned, even though I have not even completed my search. Any letters that I add continue to suggest pages dynamically. Previously, Google would only suggest search terms (but not make an actual search) based on your browser or search history.

This innovation by Google results in faster response to searches by users, as the search page is essentially immediately available as you complete typing in your full search query, and if you are lucky enough to be searching for someone or something that is at the top of the list, you can get to the result much faster than before Instant was launched.

But at what cost?

A quick look at some of the traffic results from some of our deployed systems shows that since the launch of Google Instant, traffic to Google Search has grown 125% to 200% (i.e. doubled) since the launch of Instant and the number of connections used has increased dramatically. Based on testing, the difference is driven by searches that generate images as part of the search rather than just simple text, which generate more connections and use more bandwidth. Granted, the total volume of bandwidth is still small compared with other applications, but with the frequency of searches on the Internet, this feature will likely attract more people over time, which will drive more traffic to Google. This will in turn make sponsoring these Instant search results more popular and lucrative, and sponsors will put more effort into making the search results more attractive (read more graphics). This will result in more bandwidth being used for each letter typed in the search.

As a user, I don’t think that Google Instant is a bad thing, I am actually very impressed by the speed that it adds to searches, and when I know exactly what I am looking for, I don’t even register the intermediate pages as I type in my search.   The challenge will be for network infrastructures that are already strained on bandwidth and connection scalability (firewall systems for example) to cope with the increase in the number of sessions and bandwidth utilization resulting from this new feature.

People often ask about the “Next Big Thing” on the Internet, and sometimes it is not a new video application, or release of a new P2P client, but a small thing that can have big repercussions on overall network traffic. Doubling any type of traffic is a noteworthy occurrence, and if you can do that in a single day by launching a new feature, you must be living on Internet Time. Google and others will continue to innovate at a rapid pace, and understanding the impact of new applications and new capabilities is still a critical business requirement for network operators. Procera’s solutions provide valuable information to network operators to help them keep up with the rapid changes on their networks.

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Location Awareness – The True Hollywood Story

Monday, August 16th, 2010 by Cam Cullen

There has been a lot of talk in the DPI industry about location awareness, especially as it applies to mobile networks. Understanding where congestion is affecting your subscriber’s Quality of Experience (QoE) is a critical factor in keeping high value data subscribers happy and renewing their service. But what really is “location awareness”?

Short Definition: Location awareness is the knowledge that a specific subscriber (maybe with a specific service plan) has accessed your network by connecting to a specific cell tower (as shown below).

This is extremely useful for understanding local issues, and gives an operator insight as to what is happening on that specific cell tower, both from a user perspective as well as an application perspective. It is also invaluable if congestion management techniques are going to be implemented to protect real-time traffic (i.e. voice and streaming video) over non-real time traffic (web browsing, email, file downloads) during times of congestion. But as operators look to gain more insight into their networks, there is a great demand for more and more information.

Expanded Definition: Location awareness is the knowledge that a specific subscriber has accessed the network, with a specific device, with a specific service plan, from a specific cell tower, connected to a specific SGSN, connected to a specific GGSN, in a specific region, and existing through a specific peering point (as shown below).

In this expanded definition, an operator has the opportunity to understand at a glance the real state of their network from a number of different views. Rather than needing to do off-line correlation to get a view of the network hierarchy, they can look at the network in its entirety based on their specific needs. An engineer in charge of a specific region can quickly understand if congestion or Quality of Experience issues are occurring in their region, and if it is limited to a specific device type, service class, cell tower, or GGSN/SGSN. Reports and trend information can be generated to compare the behavior of specific devices connected to a specific cell tower, or how users of a specific service class within a specific region are behaving. For congestion management, each level of the hierarchy shown above can receive unique bandwidth allocations and priorities, and a subscriber would be managed at all levels of the hierarchy – i.e. if each hierarchy had specific link speeds associated for congestion detection, congestion at any level would initiate congestion management for all levels below to ensure quality of experience was met.

This is starkly different from the simplified solution, where only local policies are taken into account. Operators are working hard to offer improved services to their customers, and the more flexibility that they have in implementing services and ensuring QoE, the more successful that they will be. In addition to real-time visibility, this hierarchy also provides valuable trending information, as since information is gathered at every level of the hierarchy, questions like “What are Android users in the West region doing”, or “What applications are iPhone users attached to the New York GGSN experiencing low QoE for?” – ALL questions that are meaningful to both engineering and marketing types.

At Procera, we are constantly trying to provide enhanced network intelligence to our customers, and DPI solutions are no longer just “application identification” systems. Awareness, Analysis, and Control  are not just our taglines, they are the guiding force in our product development and our discussions with customers.

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Device Awareness: The Key to Service Planning

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 by Cam Cullen

Recently there has been a lot of talk among DPI vendors about location awareness. Location awareness is critical to understanding where the bottlenecks on your network occur, and giving you the ability to actively manage traffic in those locations. Although this is a key capability of what Procera offers (and in much more depth than many other vendors), I want to focus on another key “awareness” component that is not often talked about that can vastly improve the capability of an operator to plan their capacity upgrades and pricing plans.

What is device awareness? Simply put, device awareness is the ability of the DPI system to understand what device is sending/requesting traffic on the network. With so many “internet-connected” devices on networks today, the variety of places and formats to access data has exploded. You can watch Netflix on many TVs, DVD or Blu-Ray players, dedicated boxes (like Roku), consoles (PS3, Wii, and Xbox), smartphones, tablets, or your PC, and Hulu on many of the same.

Why is device awareness important? Understanding what devices your users have connected to the network helps an operator to understand the potential impact of several different scenarios:

1)     If I have x users with a certain device on my networks with a certain location bias and usage profile, what happens if that number becomes 2x?

2)     If a new application comes out (say for example Netflix for PS3, or Hulu Plus for PS3), and I have x users with that device, what is my exposure if 20% of my users start using the new application?

3)     If I want to launch a service with a new device (new iPhone or Android device) and other operators have announced that the normal usage profile for that device is 200GB/month, what might happen to my network with an aggressive take rate?

For Product and Marketing planners, being able to answer these types of questions ensures that the network can handle any changes in user behavior – either application or device related. For users, it ensures that the network can adapt to their usage and not experience dissatisfaction with network performance as usage patterns morph over time. All operators are very aware of the user dissatisfaction issues floating around the world as Smartphone and mobile broadband laptop connections become mission critical for corporations. Proactive management and planning are possible with the right kind of awareness and reporting engines.

How is device awareness implemented?  There are many ways that this can be gathered on the network. In mobile networks, it is common for operators to include this information in the Business or Operational Support Systems for each user account, and often make it part of the user authentication and accounting exchange where it can be snooped by a DPI system. It can also be determined by the applications used by the subscriber (i.e. if the traffic matches Rock Band for the PS3, the user is most likely using a PS3). Another method is by information gleaned from the user agent or application specific information that can be gathered by the DPI engine during Layer 7 analysis. Although each of these methods is not a fail-safe method to gather device information, the combination of these methods can provide a very close approximation for network operators. For example, a query on how many unique subscribers matched a PS3 signature during the month could provide the basis for determining how many subscribers would have access to the new Hulu Plus video streaming application when it was released for the PS3, and another query to see how many of those subscribers had used Hulu (or any streaming video service) before would provide additional planning input to determine the impact of that new service on their network.

Device awareness is a key aspect of the “Awareness” capability of the Procera solution, and without awareness, analysis and control are not possible. I will have more to say on location awareness in a future blog, as this is another key awareness factor, not only for mobile networks, but also for fixed and wi-fi deployments as well. As devices proliferate, being able to ensure that the content is served appropriately for those devices and ensure the correct amount of bandwidth is available will be critical.

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Mobile Data Overtakes Voice In Revenue

Thursday, June 10th, 2010 by Jon Linden

Only 18 months ago I was sitting with a mobile operator who told me that their main objective was to ensure that data services didn’t cannibalize their voice revenue. The reason was simple – data service generated about 5% of the revenue.

Fast forward to June 2010. The sun is shining and the World Cup in soccer is just about to kick off, but more importantly Softbank Mobile Japan announces that data services for the first time overtook voice services in revenue in Q1! Japan has always paved the way for mobile data services, and NTT DoCoMo are expected to follow suit during the second half of this year.

But Japan is no different (at least not in this specific sense) than any other country in the western world. I see mobile operators here in Sweden spend the majority of their TV advertising on promoting mobile data services. It has become a differentiator and a big enough piece of the pie. We will shadow Japan and probably break the 50% marker in 2011 in many cases. Mobile data is a $50bn+ business this year in the US according to Chetan Sharma Consulting; a significant business where minor changes and adjustments in packaging, pricing, production cost and ARPU has a substantial impact on bottom-line.

Chetan Sharma also said that the US mobile subscription penetration was approximately 94% at the end of Q1 2010, and past 100% if we take out the demographics of 5 yrs and younger. Growth won’t come from winning new voice users, but from making the ones you have more profitable and to steal customers from the competition – e.g. with compelling data offerings. And you’ll have to control production cost since they’ll constantly expect more at the same price.

The conclusion is that mobile operators must take a seriously look at the packaging of their data services. “All you can eat” is not the best for (almost all) your customers, and it’s certainly not the best for your business case – especially as access speeds go up. That’s why we see more and more mobile operators moving away from flat rate data packages, as Cam referred to in his recent blog post. Tiered services are happening – thank God!

Eventually we will have options for people with different needs. But let’s stop for a second and consider what you’re trying to accomplish. Tiered services can either be a customer incentive or a cost insurance – or both. Don’t get too introvert in controlling potential exceptions with caps and limitations. This will add complexity, customer concern (even if they’re not even close to any limit/cap), and you’re up against some serious competition out there. But still, as said, small changes can have a big impact. Offloading peak hours to better utilize your network, attract new customers, or offer added value services that can boost ARPU can boost your profitability and ability to invest even more in your services and customer support.

I hate to say it, but we know from experience that devices (e.g. iPhone launches or subsidiesed phones) actually sell more subscriptions than any packages we produce. But service packages will support the devices and add to the differentiation. Make sure you know who your customer is, where he is, what applications he’s running, and what device he’s using – in order to accommodate his then current and general needs. Make sure your information is reliable since accurate intelligence enables proper business decisions.

So what are my recommendations? I’ve said it before (Do’s and Don’ts in Bandwidth Control) – keep it simple! Your biggest challenge will be to communicate it, implement it, and justify it (“is YouTube video or web?”). Know your customer. Define your target group and offer applicable services. Serving young savvy nerds with the same offering as unsophisticated 65+ Internet users won’t work. Don’t become too technology-driven and introvert in your business model. And avoid too many options since they will cause confusion.

So, do I need to say that we know this space and offer the solution you’re looking for? Well, we are, and we’re darn good at it! I look forward to you reaching out to me to discuss this further, but in the meantime I’ll kick back and enjoy some seriously good World Cup soccer. Sweden didn’t qualify this year, which gives Swedish mobile operators another four years to work out a business model that supports the network being flooded with real-time streaming video. Good luck (no irony intended).

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