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.