Bad News First

Radio Access Network (RAN) signaling can be considered the “bad” kind of signaling. These messages are only for establishing an Internet connection so that the data itself can reach the device.

Revenues for connections themselves are very small, yet the amount of signaling messages required to establish and then release the connection is significant.

For example, when a subscriber wishes to connect to the Internet and download an email, 50 or more signaling messages traverse back and forth between the RAN and the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN). Now consider a subscriber who connects to Facebook and plans on staying logged into the account all day. The service provider, though, does not maintain the Internet connection all day. Instead, the connection ends after the initial data is sent and received. The device will then reestablish the data connection seconds later, poll the Facebook server for updates, and release the connection – requiring another round of RAN signaling messages.

Let’s assume that the connection required 50 signaling messages for setup and tear down (a conservative number). At a cycle of every 2 seconds, that’s 1500 messages an hour, 36000 messages a day. Multiply this number by 10 million subscribers and we are talking about 360,000,000,000 signaling messages in a single day!

Yes, There Is “Good” Signaling

Diameter signaling traffic, on the other hand, directly correlates to operators’ increased data revenues and provides profits they would otherwise never realize. Diameter enables personalized mobile data services, including tiers, loyalty programs, quality of service (QoS) for specific applications, over-the-top (OTT) applications value-add and RAN-congestion controls.

This “good” signaling increases as service providers begin monetizing their data networks. For example, when a subscriber wishes to purchase a higher service tier, the GGSN/Packet Gateway (PGW) will send a Diameter message to the Policy Control and Rules Function (PCRF) to find out what restrictions are to be applied based on the subscriber plan. The PCRF will then send a Diameter message to the Subscriber Profile Repository (SPR) database to retrieve the subscriber’s profile (data quota, etc.) and send this data back to the PCRF. The PCRF in turn sends this information to the GGSN/PGW for enforcement. That’s around five Diameter messages to support one interaction on a tiered service plan (and this is a simple example).

Diameter is also the protocol that:

• Connects the PCRF with the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) equipment and the other policy enforcement control points;
• Communicates policy rules to the enforcement points throughout the network: and
• Provides the connection between the PCRF and the billing and charging domains.

The Diameter traffic that results from new revenue streams is a strong contrast to its predecessor in voice and text networks, SS7. SS7 signaling was about connecting voice facilities or, in the case of wireless networks, connecting to the Home Location Register (HLR) to support roaming.

In sum, it’s easy to have a negative association with increased signaling. But when thinking about signaling and the impact it has in the core network, remember that an increase in Diameter signaling is a good thing. It is a natural byproduct of an increase in revenue generation, and hopefully will only continue to increase as operators introduce more innovative and creative mobile data plans.

Standards and interoperability

To create a flexible Diameter network, you need products that can plug-and-play, using a full range of standards-based Diameter interfaces, as well as support for proprietary interfaces.

Diameter underpins several network control functions in 3G, IMS and LTE networks. For maximum flexibility, each control element in the Diameter network must demonstrate proven interoperability through a broad array of standards-based Diameter interfaces such as Gx, Gy, Rx, S6, S9, Sy and Sh. Taking a standards-based approach frees operators from the cost and constraint of proprietary solutions, allowing them to create a plug-and-play Diameter network built with best-of-breed products.

Integrated Diameter Solutions

And finally, to take full advantage of the New Diameter Network, you need innovative, integrated Diameter solutions that leverage the combined functionality of Diameter applications.

The ability to combine multiple Diameter applications to create integrated, standards-based solutions is a critical requirement of the New Diameter Network. Integrated signaling, policy and subscriber data management solutions give service providers the ability to create use cases uniquely tailored to their market, subscribers and business models. For example, by combining Diameter routing with policy and subscriber data, a service provider can steer premium roaming subscribers to its preferred partner’s network. Similarly, operators can provide preferred network and policy handling to premium enterprise customers by routing the Diameter messages from that group to a particular policy server for special treatment such as enhanced quality of service.

To summarize, your success in the mobile data business will be dictated by the architectural choices you make for your New Diameter Network in terms of scalability, reliability, software orientation, flexibility, security, interoperability, and integrated Diameter solutions. For more information about Diameter protocol, check out the Diameter Learning Center.

Flexibility

Rolling out services quickly – in days or weeks, not months – is a critical weapon in the battle to capture customers and generate revenues from OTT, Cloud and M2M services. In this competitive and rapidly changing market, service providers can’t afford long development and test cycles. They need the flexibility to rapidly develop, test, implement, and get feedback on new services. To do so, operators must take control of their own service creation with easy-to-use policy creation tools that support integrated analytics, open interfaces, and a wide variety of pre-configured use cases. By coupling those tools with a unified subscriber database with open application interfaces, service providers can leverage dynamic data to create highly personalized, targeted services.

Security

Operators are quickly realizing that they face the real threat of being marginalized by non-traditional, Internet players. To prevent this erosion, they need to sharpen their focus on the more profitable part of the mobile data chain – enabling content and personalized services – by forging revenue-sharing relationships with third-party players. Operators have the opportunity to claim their stake in the mobile content ecosystem by leveraging their unique network assets and customer data to add value to OTT, Cloud and M2M applications. But, they’ll have to tread carefully as they do to ensure the security of their networks and the privacy of their subscribers. That requires a Diameter network that allows providers to securely exposure select subscriber data, policies and analytics to third parties while shielding the underlying network architecture from view. The network must also enable providers to protect the privacy of their subscribers by allowing them to easily opt-in and out of advertising campaigns and special promotions that use subscriber data.

For more information about Diameter protocol, check out the Diameter Learning Center.

This article is part of the series Architecting the New Diameter Network. Next time, we’ll examine the need for Standards and interoperability as you build your robust Diameter network.

The new Policy Server release, available in June 2012, gives service providers the ability to introduce:

• Shared data plans. Simplify data plans for groups of users by offering shared data plans that pool usage quotas across multiple subscribers and devices during the billing cycle. Service providers can also define multiple thresholds for managing subscribers’ speeds, access and notifications.
• LTE service options in available service areas. Authorize location-based services such as higher service tiers, casual usage plans or trial offers by detecting when subscribers enter and move within LTE coverage areas.
• Enhanced over-the-top applications. Add value to OTT applications by offering unique quality-of-service rules, including location-based service enhancements, and launching consumer-friendly plans based on popular applications. The latest Diameter interfaces such as Sd for Deep Packet Inspection and Content Optimization solutions deliver faster time-to-market for new services and improved interoperability.
• More flexible offers. A richer set of tools in Tekelec’s sophisticated rules engine gives service providers the ability to add exceptions and exclusions to existing policies, including service tier, device and time.
• Table-driven policies to accelerate time-to-market. Pre-defined policy tables to segment subscribers by service tier, device, application usage and other parameters, providing an efficient mechanism to modify policy rules to launch and evolve new services.

The Tekelec Policy Server resides on the company’s unique EAGLE XG middleware, the engine of the New Diameter Network that provides subscriber database scalability, high message processing rates and superior reliability. The Policy Server is deployed in 55 service provider networks, including 42 Tier 1s, in 33 countries.

Tekelec will participate in two sessions:

• “Managing Data Traffic and Monetizing the LTE Network: The Importance of Diameter Signaling and Policy Control”
  • Houck Reed, vice president, product management and operations, will discuss the New Diameter Network, the foundation for a successful mobile data business on April 17th at 4:55 p.m. The New Diameter Network is comprised of control elements – policy servers, charging systems, subscriber databases, gateways, and session and mobility management equipment – that rely on the Diameter protocol to exchange network, subscriber, policy, and charging information.
• “OTT and Operators Partnership and Cooperation Potential for the Latin American Market”
  • Travis Russell, technologist, strategic marketing, will speak on a panel about how over-the-top providers such as Facebook and Netflix and mobile operators can collaborate for future mobile data revenue opportunities. His panel takes place April 17 at 2:40 p.m.

Change is the new norm in the fast-paced, volatile mobile data market. The days of inflexible software and proprietary hardware are gone. Creating an elastic Diameter network requires a new software-based approach that’s architected for scalability and adaptability, using cutting-edge middleware and standard servers.

Taking a software-based approach to network design provides substantial benefits over legacy, proprietary models. Databases, message processing, OAM&P, and policy applications can be configured individually or in logical combinations on standard server blades or rackmounted servers in a central office or data center. Each application scales independently, allowing the Diameter network to grow incrementally to support increasing subscriber and traffic growth with a pay-as-you-go model. Service providers can reshape hardware with only software-level changes to create new features, applications, use cases, or technology. Applications share subscriber, network and device data to enhance performance, policy control and subscriber quality of experience. And, the total cost of ownership is lower because having a common platform simplifies interoperability testing, maintenance and support.

For more information about Diameter protocol, check out the Diameter Learning Center.

This article is part of the series Architecting the New Diameter Network. Next time, we’ll examine the need for a security and flexibility you build your robust Diameter network.

Mobile data is the greatest opportunity that service providers have ever seen. Mobile data revenues are expected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2020 – a seven fold increase over 2011, according to the GSMA. This growth in data is being driven by mobile application store revenues which are increasing from $1 billion to more than $25 billion and enterprise cloud services, which are growing from $ 5 billion to more than $20 billion over the same period (Yankee Group).  It is also being impacted by the rapid growth in connected mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, smart meters, traffic cameras and many others, which is doubling from $6 billion today to $12 billion by 2020 (GSMA).

With this plethora of connected devices and data usage, always-on, reliability is key for global service providers to establish strong customer relationships. However, enabling and maintaining that level of reliability in IP networks is complex. Data and signaling loads are unpredictable – as recent outages have shown. A single event, such as the World Cup, or even a new iconic devic,e such as the third-generation iPad with LTE, can create a sudden, huge spike in traffic. And, when M2M devices begin to dominate the network, billions of new connections will create unimaginable data and signaling volumes.

To maintain reliability in the all-IP world, service providers will need a rock-solid Diameter network with a common operation, administration, maintenance and provisioning (OAM&P) framework to handle network management, analytics, congestion control, and overload protection.

This article is part of the series Architecting the New Diameter Network. Next week, we’ll examine the need for a software-based approach as you build your robust Diameter network. For more information about Diameter protocol, check out the Diameter Learning Center.

The iPad 3 supports HD video, over-the-top services such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as a wide variety of data-heavy consumer and business applications. However, the rise in mobile data traffic will not be operators’ primary problem. They have been aggressively addressing data capacity for years with strategies such as migration to 3G and LTE, policy control and offloading traffic to Wi-Fi.

With LTE, operators will need to handle network signaling messages. Signaling involves the underlying communications that enable charging, billing, user authentication and authorization. These essential messages support data activity over 3G and LTE networks. The impact of network signaling, however, has gone largely unreported.

Click here to read the entire article.

• Scalability
• Reliability
• Flexibility
• Security
• Standards and interoperability
• A software-based approach
• Integrated Diameter solutions

The focus of today’s blog will be on scalability.

The growth in 3G and LTE services and devices is unleashing a signaling storm on mobile networks. The number of data-enabled devices and applications is multiplying rapidly as subscribers increasingly rely on mobile networks as their primary access to the Internet. This shift is driving not only a surge in the overall signaling and data traffic, but also in the amount of traffic each subscriber generates.

Global service providers are already feeling the impact of these shifts through outages triggered by signaling overloads. For a network of five million subscribers, a single major outage can cost tens of millions of dollars. Service providers clearly need to get ahead of the curve and design and build their networks from the start with the scalability to support hundreds of thousands of messages per minute, tens of millions on concurrent sessions, and hundreds of millions of subscribers and devices.

Next week, we’ll examine the need for reliability as you build your robust Diameter network. For more information about Diameter protocol, check out the Diameter Learning Center.