Carriers and service providers are operating in a highly competitive environment. Price erosion and the number of alternatives are continual threats to both profitability and revenue growth. In addition their existing customer base has the ability to switch between providers relatively simply compared to the past. Service providers need and many are looking to:

1. Obtain more efficiency from the existing infrastructure and partners in order to maintain price competitiveness

2. Provide additional services other than just a network in order to improve margins and revenues

3. Maintain or improve the user’s satisfaction to ensure customer retention

Application Aware Infrastructure

Traditionally, customers, providers and carriers saw the objective as providing a “utility like service” network. Now there is a requirement for more than just “utility like” service levels, rather it has to be an “application aware” network delivery infrastructure. An infrastructure that provides the service levels required by both customer applications and those provided by the provider themselves. “QoS” Quality of Service is the core of the “application aware” network that is able to optimize, secure and provide the quality levels necessary for any application.

Triple play is a hot topic with new revenue opportunities for providers; however it can also very often mean a trade off between density of users, bandwidth and quality of service. Qos is key in the effective delivery – the very services offered such as VoIP, gaming, video etc are also threats to service levels and therefore customer satisfaction. Heavy volumes of uncontrolled bursty traffic on a network without QoS will result in poor quality voice conversations, unacceptable quality video streaming media, failing applications etc. due to Packet loss and latency.

True QoS entails more than just prioritization of applications, its about guaranteeing application delivery no matter what the threat might be. Viruses, worms, p2p, DDOS attacks as well as sheer volume of traffic affect the performance and therefore need to be controlled. That’s why Opteq Systems provide a scaleable solution that encompasses the performance, security and control/management of a network and the applications traversing it.

Providers seek ways to maximize the number of users and traffic on any given link whilst minimizing churn (multiplexing). Being cost competitive is about obtaining more out of less, Q.o.S is key to achieving this without providing an inferior service.

MPLS and ExtendedMPLS

MPLS based services have gained wider acceptance both with carriers and with customers, as they are dynamic, flexible, ideally suited to geographically dispersed environments, and can be delivered over existing network services. MPLS in isolation provides just part of the promise of an application optimized WAN infrastructure.  Opteq’s ExtendedMPLS facility enhances traditional MPLS by providing a unique ability to enable a provider to deliver application level guarantees. There are several limitations Inherent within MPLS, the number and granularity of classes and most importantly the fact that when saturation does occur within a class the impact to an application becomes unpredictable as overflow packets are randomly moved into alternatives classes or dropped. ExtendedMPLS provides an unlimited amount of application control granularity and can automatically control and cascade traffic between classes ahead of saturation based upon pre-defined rules. 

With the Opteq iQ solution an organization can fully leverage the benefits of MPLS and implement a complete network infrastructure that recognizes and delivers on the organizations real needs. “Organizations traditionally saw the network infrastructure as a commoditized utility – what they now require are performance guarantees for their critical applications and user groups.

A Single Solution

Opteq Systems International is the only Network Application Management developer that can offer a single solution for all of the QoS needs of a provider/carrier. The Opteq iQ solution is an appliance based modular platform on which a complete portfolio of optional, performance enhancing and security applications can be run.  (Bandwidth management (Q.o.S), firewall, traffic discovery, VPN, web caching, content filtering and email gateway – these can be implemented transparently)

Full link management and visibility allows the service provider to have layer 7 level knowledge of traffic patterns and to be alerted if there is any application on the network that might be out of a normal usage profile. Per user/group/host/protocol/application controls and quotas are all easy to implement. Opteq iQ gives the provider the ability to manage both their Internet link and the links to clients on the same box at the same time.

The big QoS problem faced by our competitor manufacturers is an inability to control the rate at which non TCP/IP traffic is coming at them from the sending source. Consequently their control/prioritization is applied only as it leaves and as a result congestion can still occur, latency increases as the prioritization queues lengthen and eventually severe packet loss occurs if the incoming burst does not stop. The consequences on latency sensitive applications such as VOIP and video conferencing etc can be severe causing major disruptions.

Opteq iQ overcomes this problem and can uniquely control the flow rate of any protocol incoming and outgoing. The philosophy employed is all about avoiding queues and minimizing latency as it is far more effective to slow down a source from sending low priority traffic rather than let it be sent and then queue it. High priority traffic can then flow freely through the network, removing queuing everywhere, offloading routers and other devices from the tasks they are least efficient at.  The result is a network that is higher performing, more efficient, seamlessly controled, with optimsed traffic flows based upon the application/user requirements and vastly reduced latency.