Breaking the high speed barrier

I have recently had several interesting discussions with solution vendors who are faced with the serious challenge of making their systems work at multi-Gbps line rates. To break this “high-speed barrier”, they can either 1) spend considerable time and resources redeveloping their products to work at higher speeds, or 2) optimize their solutions with the help of Network Intelligence.

The challenge is especially acute for vendors in the mobile data environment, where bandwidth is growing at an exponential rate. Vendors who sell (for example) mobile service quality monitoring need to continue offering the same level of functionality at speeds in excess of 1 Gbps. However, it is not as easy to do well at high speeds what they used to do well at lower speeds… Of course, some vendors may be tempted to reduce functionality in order to handle the increased bandwidth, but this is not an option : it is clearly not an acceptable solution for mobile operators and their clients.

So how can Network Intelligence accelerate existing mobile solutions?

As we all know, mobile data traffic is literally exploding, due to the combination of new iPhone-type handsets, new broadband infrastructure (3G, HSDPA, HSUPA) and attractive pricing schemes. At the same time, video streaming, P2P, and social networking applications consume a large percentage of this traffic, pushing bandwidth at the core of mobile networks to multi-Gbps. This creates a need to generate useful data at workable bandwidths, and only retain essential information (e.g. IP metadata or IPDRs) for lower priority services (P2P, etc.).

Example 1: TroubleShooting

In order for customer service to respond to customer complaints, mobile operators often need to check service quality for certain subscribers. In this case, a Qosmos probe can filter selected IMSIs and forward only relevant traffic to an existing troubleshooting solution, at manageable speeds. No change is necessary to the existing solution.

Example 2: Subscriber Knowledge

Mobile operators carry massive amounts of data traffic from services outside their walled-gardens. This traffic can represent more than 90% of total traffic (see this Webcast for a concrete example). To optimize networks and service offerings, MNOs require better network intelligence to answer questions like: what mobile devices are being used (PC/handheld)? Which applications drive data growth? What are user the behavior patterns? All these questions can be answered with Qosmos Network Intelligence technology.

Example 3: Lawful Intercept

Beyond mobile solutions, similar challenges exist in the area of Lawful Intercept, where many intercept probes have not been designed to handle very high bandwidth. Here again, Network Intelligence technology saves the day by processing the high-bandwidth raw traffic and carrying out optimized dispatching of information to an existing lawful intercept system that can continue to process efficiently.

In summary, Network Intelligence technology can be used to enable existing solutions to continue performing efficiently even at very high speeds! Even though total bandwidth exceeds several Gbps, the traffic selected for forwarding can be handled easily by existing applications. The benefit for solution vendors: by adding a layer of Network Intelligence, they can avoid costly development and continue to sell existing solutions even as bandwidth grows exponentially!

I should also point out that our approach is different from “load balancing” provided by some suppliers, since Network Intelligence implements smart traffic filtering based on deeply embedded criteria (e.g. IMSI, MIME type, email sender, etc.), and can generate CDRs even for discarded traffic.

Jerome

Time for Change

You've certainly caught some of the buzz generated by the recent Obama - Verizon controversy.

It's clear that telecom operators’ databases contain sensitive customer information, ranging from subscriber phone numbers and addresses, to private bank details, call history and geo-localization data. And you don't need to be president-elect to understand that preventing the theft or misuse of this confidential information is of critical importance. Knowing who accesses what, where, when and why are the cardinal points of confidence in the information age.

Data protection represents, therefore, both a strategic and technical challenge for operators, who must implement a secure and actionable tracking system across the various access points to their subscriber databases: from internal customer relations and technical support teams, to outsourced customer care services, to malicious hackers.

At Qosmos, we like to say “Yes we can”. Qosmos Network Intelligence technology enables Data Protection and Data Theft Prevention solutions that monitor network traffic in real time, and extract complete and detailed access records for all intranet, web-based or legacy (e.g. TN3270) applications, whether standard or custom, and whatever network protocols are used. Which means fully traceable access, real-time reactivity, and rapid post-processing of information.

So that when government agencies and lawyers come knocking, you've not only got the answer - you know who else does...

Jerome

The Challenges of Virtual Identity Management

At ISS World Europe a couple of weeks ago, Qosmos presented at a seminar focused on lawful interception and network intelligence gathering.

What comes out clear from the ISS conference is the need for efficient Virtual Identity Management. Put simply: in the context of legal intercept, how do you track a user who can be anywhere, use anything, connect by any means, and who uses multiple virtual IDs ?

Successful and effective Virtual Identity Management, means being able to recognize and extract a target identifier over a wide variety of applications. And this is by no means easy. To take the case of http: the same protocol is used by different applications, which means you must understand the logic of the applications above http. In such cases, the successful recognition and extraction of target identifiers requires the implementation of complex mechanisms specifically developed for these applications, and a maintenance and upgrade policy that enables you both to keep tabs on frequent changes in protocol structures and take on board new applications. And from a global perspective, this means keeping abreast of regional apps like QQ (China), Mail.ru (Russia) and India Times webmail!

These are some of the interesting challenges we work on at Qosmos.

P.S.: On my next post, I'll speak of my upcoming TeleStrategies webinar, where the focus will be on information extraction in the field of Business Intelligence.

Jerome