Mobile networks are experiencing a relentless traffic growth in last years: data traffic continues to grow at an exponential rate, driven by mobile video and OTT services.
Furthermore, the disaggregation of the control plane and physical separation of the control and user planes, actually used in modern networks like LTE CUPS and 5G deployments, adds additional complexity.
For mobile carriers, efficiently and effectively monitor performance, Quality of Experience (QoE) and security for their services and subscribers, as well as identify and monetize new offerings is critical to success. But actual network probes that provide visibility into wireless core networks have limited capacity and may not cope with the exploding mobile subscriber traffic. Additional probes need to be added, and GTP User Plane traffic has to be balanced between them, granting that the whole subscriber session is sent to the same tool.
Here is where Microtel Innovation can help, with Aster Advanced NPBs capable to balance Core Network Traffic to the tools in a coherent way, at full speed.
Balancing the GTP User Plane is not an easy task: it needs to be done in a way that grant that all the Subscriber traffic is sent to the same probe, and assure best performances, so that the solution is future proof, ready for the growing data traffic that will be in the coming years.
Moreover, the solution has to work also in case Control Plane is not present, since this condition is now going to be frequently deployed with modern networks like CUPS and 5G.
How to do that? This can be achieved balancing the User Plane traffic using Inner IP filtering, and doing that in hardware to avoid performances problems. In fact, in GTP protocol the Inner IP is the Subscriber IP address, and balancing the traffic using such key will create User Plane traffic flows belonging to the same subscriber.
Microtel Innovation Aster A-640 may be used to implement these functionalities and forward the Core Network data traffic to the monitoring and security tools in a coherent way. They are based on the powerful Intel® Tofino chipset, the latest generation of P4 programmable Ethernet-Switch ASIC. They will grant high flexibility and top performances to our customers, and a rich feature set which may be easily customized on their specific needs: this is what Telecom Operators need to face today 5G monitoring challenges.
Download the technical datasheet or visit the dedicated page.
| Product | ASTER A-640 | |
|---|---|---|
| Product image |
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| Technical data sheet | ASTER A-640 | |
| PERFORMANCES | ||
| Switching Capacity | 6.4 Tb/s | |
| INPUT/OUTPUT PORTS | ||
| Total number of input/output ports | 32x40/100 Gb/s | |
| Max number of 40/100 Gb/s ports | 32 | |
| Max numbers of 10/25 Gb/s ports | 128 | |
| Max number of 1 Gb/s ports | 0 | |
| NPB functionalities | ||
| Filtering and Load Balancing, using inner and outer parameters | ||
| Traffic replication and aggregation | ||
| L2GRE, L3GRE, VXLAN tunnel Start/Termination | ||
| Advanced Capabilities | ||
| Slicing, Header Stripping, tagging | ||
| SYSTEM SPECIFICATION | ||
| Chassis | 1U | |
| AC Redundant power supply | ||
| DC Redundant power supply | ||
