Innovation Solves Virtualized Network Scalability Challenges for the Data Plane

March 18, 2015 Prakash Siva

Multimedia traffic on mobile and fixed line networks is expanding faster than could have ever been predicted. Service providers are trying to cope with this increased volume but they’re realizing it’s more than just an issue of scale—they need a better approach to process, manage and ultimately monetize traffic on their networks.

Millions of subscribers are creating hundreds of millions of data sessions or ‘flows’ within a single service provider network. Complicating the issue even further, video, IoT and 4G/5G will create a new set of network bottlenecks unless data plane traffic is intelligently directed to the appropriate resources. The next-generation services infrastructure must be able to quickly respond to all of these dynamic demands from subscribers to offer cost effective and innovative services.

Until now service providers have managed the huge volume of IP packets by combining discrete load balancers, edge routers and ToR switches. However, the continued use of disparate components to manage data traffic has led to unnecessary complexity and costs in the network. To handle increased volume and effectively manage traffic, service providers are adopting packet-switched technology and turning to Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to solve key technical challenges.

The culmination of ever increasing multimedia traffic, service provider packet-switch network re-tooling, and the arrival of SDN/NFV presents an opportunity for innovation. Recognizing this opportunity, Radisys has developed a new FlowEngineTM product line targeted specifically for communications and content providers that want more control and flexibility in their network. The FlowEngine TDE-1000 Intelligent Load Balancer is the first member in this family of traffic distribution platforms targeted squarely at enabling scalable software-defined networks and dynamic service function chaining. The service-aware TDE-1000 can distributes data flows to only the physical or Virtualized Network Function (VNF) resources applicable to each session’s processing requirements, such as video optimization, encryption or policy enforcement and does so at line-rate speeds. TDE acts as the classifier and Service Function Forwarder (SFF) in the SFC architecture.

We’ve pioneered an approach to stateful data plane load balancing with the TDE-1000, bringing together these capabilities plus novel features that address the specific needs of an SDN and NFV-based environment, all in a compact and cost effective product. The TDE-1000, coupled with our highly respected software customization and professional services capabilities, optimizes SDN-controlled traffic distribution, allowing for near-immediate activation of new revenue-generating services. Click here to learn more about how our FlowEngine Technology is a key building block that complements both legacy and SDN/NFV infrastructure.

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