ATCA DPI leader partners with top software and services companies to provide core capabilities and offshore development centers for NEPs to bring DPI-based solutions to market quickly.
CTIA WIRELESS – ORLANDO, Fla. – March 22, 2011 –Continuous Computing, the global provider of integrated platform solutions that address the mobile broadband capacity challenge, today announced FlowEngine, a deep packet inspection (DPI) software framework to enable network equipment providers (NEPs) to accelerate development and delivery of applications that make use of DPI. Designed to save time and boost performance, FlowEngine combines best-in-class software components with Continuous Computing’s load balancing and Trillium monitoring software with an extensive range of application intelligence software from Qosmos and packet processing software from 6WIND and Wind River.
Furthermore, to assist customers in integration and customization of network intelligence systems and thus minimize any go-to-market roadblocks, Continuous Computing has expanded its Trillium Professional Services team and forged strategic alliances with offshore development center (ODC) titans HCL, Tech Mahindra and Wipro – all of which provide dedicated development teams to help NEPs expedite product delivery. By building on its unique industry position spanning both wireless and packet processing expertise with a track record that includes 21 DPI customer wins, Continuous Computing is taking definitive steps to make it easy for NEPS to develop and deploy “content-aware” network applications with reduced risk, cost and complexity.
DPI is being used extensively to deliver real time information on network traffic and applications in order to steer traffic or measure and optimize network performance. Although this capability provides a significant benefit to network operators and subscribers alike, the challenge to NEPs is that the DPI skills needed are often outside the realm of experience for developers of these classes of application. Examples of applications requiring network intelligence capabilities include:
- Internet offload gateways
- Policy enforcement systems
- Network monitoring and content security solutions
- Video optimization platforms and offload gateways
- Lawful Intercept and associated homeland security platforms
“As NEPs branch into applications like video offload that are not traditional in the DPI space, they need to be able to differentiate themselves by focusing on the application itself rather than the technology behind how flows are identified and steered,” said Manish Singh, vice president of product line management for Continuous Computing. “This type of collaboration is vitally important, as the mobile industry has an immediate need for solutions that can help operators manage the onslaught of traffic coming from subscribers’ demand for advanced content.”
Continuous Computing’s FlowEngine provides a foundation allowing users new to network intelligence to rapidly create advanced applications that run on the company’s carrier-class, standards-based FlexTCA hardware platforms. Originally built on Continuous Computing’s field-proven 10G FlexPacket ATCA-PP50 DPI blade, FlowEngine is now coming to the 40GbE FlexTCA platforms delivering a range of solutions from 40-320Gbps capacity, including the FlexTCA 200Gbps DPI Platform announced today (see separate news release).
The FlowEngine framework, which delivers the core capabilities required for network intelligence applications in markets such as video optimization, policy enforcement and Internet offload, is comprised of five key elements:
- Pre-processing, including defragmentation and de-tunneling of packets
- Key generation from one or more L4 header parameters
- Flow table, which lists known flows and can track 1M+ flows per blade
- Rules engine to create and apply policies and actions to packets
- Classification engine, to identify unknown packets and flows
Commenting on the FlowEngine framework and expanded partner ecosystem, Erik Larsson, Chairman of the Network Intelligence Alliance, stated: “Network Intelligence is becoming critical to deliver the next wave of applications while protecting networks, subscribers and the wider community. By simplifying development, FlowEngine opens up the use of DPI to an ever-increasing range of new applications and users.”
Thibaut Bechetoille, CEO of Qosmos, said: “The success of mobile policy enforcement and Internet offload solutions is highly dependent on their ability to understand subscribers and applications in real time. FlowEngine’s capability to manage millions of mobile subscribers simultaneously, tightly integrated with the Qosmos ixEngine to identify new sessions and users, provides an incredibly powerful tool for building next generation mobile network solutions.”
Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND, commented: “While broadband and mobile networks use a vast array of protocols to encapsulate and transport IP traffic, the range and diversity of use adds significant complexity for DPI applications. The 6WINDGate software enables FlowEngine to deliver the vital features and performance to process the network traffic in real time, packet by packet, up to 200Gbps per system, to extract embedded user traffic prior to DPI analysis.”
Mike Langlois, general manager for networking and telecommunications at Wind River, stated: “The ongoing explosion of data traffic demands advanced packet handling solutions that enable a range of network acceleration capabilities including DPI. The combination of Continuous Computing’s FlowEngine with Wind River runtime technologies, such as Wind River Network Acceleration Platform, can deliver an innovative solution that helps our customers break through the traffic bottleneck and bring much needed network intelligence to improve ARPU.”
About Continuous Computing
Continuous Computing® is the global source of integrated platform solutions that enable network equipment providers to overcome the mobile broadband capacity challenge quickly and cost effectively. Leveraging more than 20 years of telecom innovation, the company empowers customers to increase return on investment by focusing internal resources on differentiation for 3G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), Femtocell and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) applications. Expertise and responsiveness set the company apart: only Continuous Computing combines best-in-class ATCA platforms with world-famous Trillium® protocol software to create highly-optimized, field-proven wireless and packet processing network infrastructure. Continuous Computing’s investors include Cipio Partners, Intel Capital, Palomar Ventures, Saints Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures.
About Radisys
Radisys (NASDAQ: RSYS), a global leader in open telecom solutions, enables service providers to drive disruption with new open architecture business models. Radisys’ innovative disaggregated and virtualized enabling technology solutions leverage open reference architectures and standards, combined with open software and hardware to power business transformation for the telecom industry, while its world-class services organization delivers systems integration expertise necessary to solve communications and content providers’ complex deployment challenges.
Radisys, Continuous Computing and Trillium are registered trademarks of Radisys Corporation.
