Connect your access network to the cloud
As cloud computing and cloud architectures become more prevalent, it makes sense to extend the cost-efficiencies of cloud-based computing to your DSL, cable and wireless access networks.
Your data centers and your access network are each optimized internally, not jointly. The access network is not aware of the loads in the data centers or the congestion in the network leading to the cloud. As IMS, messaging and CDN resources are transitioned to a virtualized environment, it becomes essential to make intelligent routing decisions at the access network based on resource availability. Conversely, you need to make resources available based on demand seen at the access network.
Virtualization and cloud transformation are making their way deep into the access network, especially with the emergence of the M2M market. Soon, gateways such as PDN-GW, GGSN, BRAS, and CMTS will run as virtual machines rather than dedicated appliances. Then, connecting wireless base stations for example to the ‘cloud’ of gateway VMs will require far greater intelligence than today’s DNS-based rudimentary traffic distribution and load-balancing logic.
The ConteXtream Grid solution provides a bridge between your access network and your cloud environment. Bringing your distributed access and the services networks into complete harmony, the ConteXtream Grid solution ensures that sessions are directed to appropriate resources in the most efficient manner.
Content-aware traffic steering
In order to provide advanced services to a subset of endpoints or traffic, ConteXtream’s Grid can selectively steer traffic to in-line service elements performing various functions, such as security gateways or specialized compression devices. These service elements may be applicable to some endpoints (subscribers or virtual machines) but not to others. Traffic steering dynamically directs bearer traffic through service elements using application logic based on the endpoint’s profile, traffic type and content, as well as transient external conditions, such as load.
To minimize reliance on local addressing schemes and IP subnet topology, each ConteXtream Grid node isolates local addressing using network address translation (NAT) technology and application level gateway (ALG), when necessary. By taking into consideration information buried deeply inside the payload, the ConteXtream Grid solution can apply the ALG to further refine traffic steering rules and load balancing schemes for requests such as:
- NFS mounting
- SOAP service
- HTTP streaming
- SIP sessions
TCP optimization
Since global virtualization of resources implies that services may be provided alternately by local or remote resources, the ConteXtream Grid fabric is designed to abstract the underlying network performance from the applications it carries. This allows the fabric to maximize the utilization of applications that were designed for a local area network when operating over a higher latency wide area network and/or access networks.
By employing advanced congestion avoidance algorithms, the ConteXtream Grid solution ensures optimal use of network resources to prevent queue build up, resulting in lower latency, improved application performance and an overall higher quality of service, without increased network capacity.
