AAA   global   hardware   scalability   e-commerce   MMS   JavaScript   video      managed  hosting      capacity      acceleration      optimization      encryption   replication   access   IMS   gateway   SNMP   firewall   WAN   consolidation   LTE   iRules   storage tiering   rate shaping   agility   switch   intelligence   intrusion detection      unified  access      reverse      SaaS      stream      code      download   offloading   open source   traffic   virtualization-ready   anti-phishing   syslog   technology     anti-virus     NGIN     VPN     DNS     email     application delivery   computing     disaster recovery     provisioning     CPU     HTTP redirect     XHTML   protocol      HTML      VoIP      wiki      dynamic  infrastructure      DMZ      iControl   enterprise   HTTPS   policy   plug-in   SSL   software   decryption   data center   denial of service   source   persistence   security   application security   web 4G   services   cloud computing   proxy   architecture   server   persistence   SNAT   development    compression   asymmetric   remote access   symmetric   automated tiering    best practices    performance     IPTV   availability     pool   backup   web 2.0   bandwidth   infrastructure   redirect   blog   business continuity      caching      content      XSS      convergence      HSS      cookie   SIP      adaptability      apps      CSS        browser      IPsec      database      3G                             

F5 Solutionsfor scalable value added mobile services

F5 solutions help mobile network operators create the robust and scalable architecture that is essential for delivering exciting new services to millions of subscribers.

Ten out of the top ten fixed and mobile network operators use F5 products.

Find out why.

3

OverviewOver the course of just a few short years, the business landscape for mobile network operators has changed almost beyond recognition. In the not so distant past, systems were geared purely for the transmission of voice packets. Today, mobile network operators need to deliver email, Internet browsing, video, multimedia games, images and a vast array of web-based applications.

Growth in the popularity of hand held communications devices,

such as the iPhone, are fuelling a surge in mobile subscriber

numbers and unprecedented growth in demand for exciting

new web-based services. Around the world, mobile network

operators of all sizes are coming to terms with the need to

create an entirely different business model – and the mobile

infrastructure to support it.

Challenges exist in two key areas. Firstly, mobile network

operators need to upgrade their core infrastructure to enable

them to support both increased subscriber numbers and the

explosion in new services. Essentially this means planning and

implementing a migration to IP Multimedia Subsystem

(IMS), the industry’s new architectural framework for delivering

Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia services over mobile networks.

Secondly, mobile network operators have to respond to the

demand for media rich content and exploit the emerging

business opportunities associated with it.

The current economic climate is adding to the pressure for

carriers. The increasing demand for bandwidth comes right

at a time when intense price competition is driving down

average revenue per user (ARPU). Mobile network operators

must act quickly to address bandwidth shortfalls and customer

complaints. However, they also need to make prudent

purchasing decisions that protect their existing infrastructure

investment, contribute to sustainable cost savings and enable the

delivery of profitable new services.

F5 helps mobile network operators to build robust IMS

infrastructures by:

• Maximising the use of existing bandwidth to support greater

numbers of smartphones and data plans

• Minimising expenditure on additional servers and other

network equipment

• Managing large traffic volumes securely across multiple

data centres

• Scaling up and improving the reliability of Authentication,

Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) servers

• Controlling traffic according to business demands, service type

and customer requirements

F5 solutions support the delivery of media rich content by:

• Streaming video, high-definition video and applications over

less bandwidth

• Scaling up instant messaging servers and MMS/SMS solutions

to meet increased demand for real-time communication

• Ensuring high quality of service for subscribers

• Identifying the location of subscribers, so that carriers can offer

location-based services

• Increasing revenue opportunities by delivering new services to

specific groups of subscribers

4

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)IMS has become the de facto infrastructure for 3G and 4G networks. Inherently open, it provides a common platform for merging cellular voice networks and the Internet. It is based on industry standards and provides a flexible platform for the delivery of next generation services.

Most mobile network operators are already developing their IMS infrastructures, but alongside advantages, they are also encountering a number of critical challenges…

5

Providing access for hundreds of millions of subscribersMany telecommunications providers are already concerned

about how to meet the needs of their existing customers, given

the constraints in their bandwidth capacity. Yet the number of

subscribers worldwide is continuing to grow exponentially.

It’s a case of too much demand and constrained supply.

To increase bandwidth, mobile network operators are continuing

to add more servers and more data centres, but costs are

escalating. And, of course, the demands on bandwidth are only

going to increase, as both existing and new subscribers start to

make use of more and more converged services.

Mobile network operators need to find creative ways to optimise

their existing bandwidth and develop their IMS to provide

network access for growing numbers of subscribers, with

growing requirements.

F5 helps to address this issue by maximising the available

capacity in existing servers across the entire business – in added

value services data centres, in user access data centres and in

interconnecting data centres. Our BIG-IP® solutions improve

bandwidth optimisation and efficiently handle the management

of massive numbers of concurrent TCP/IP sessions. By deploying

F5 products, mobile network operators can defer the purchase of

further servers and networking equipment and instead maximise

the value that they gain from their existing equipment.

F5 solutions work at all three core levels of the IMS architecture:

the access level, the standards level and the application level.

WEB / WAP, EMAIL, CALENDAR, PIM,

ONLINE TRANSACTION,CONTENT SERVICES,

GAMING

VOICEMAILMMSSMS EMSETC.

VIDEO ON DEMANDPAY PER VIEW

WIRELESS BCMCIP TV

VOIP, IM, PTTVIDEO CONFERENCE

PRESENCELOCATION

VPN, 800,CONFERENCING& PORTABILITY

IMS SERVICES

APPLICATION CLIENTS

MIGRATION INTEGRATION

WEB / WAPSERVICES

MESSAGINGSERVICES

STREAMINGSERVICES

BSS

OSS

IMS COREINTERFACES

- SIP- DIAMETER- TCAP- MAP- CAP- INAP- RTP

IMSSERVICES

INSERVICES

HTTPSMTPMIMEIMAP

MM1SMSWAP

RTP / RTSPIGMP

DIAMETERSIP

CAPINAPTCAP

CORE INFRASTRUCTURE AND IP NETWORKS

F5 solutions support the creation of a robust and scalable IMS across all three core levels of the architecture: the access level, the standards level and the application level

6

Ensuring the reliability of Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) infrastructureWhen the number of subscribers increases to the volume

handled by many network operators today, core systems are

placed under considerable strain. The servers in Authentication,

Authorisation and Accounting (AAA) infrastructures, in

particular, can quickly become overloaded and can struggle to

authenticate all user traffic as quickly as necessary.

Many mobile network operators have to repeatedly replace or

increase their AAA servers with larger ones, or segment their

network to handle the higher volumes of traffic. But these are

expensive solutions to a common – and recurring – problem.

F5’s BIG-IP solution enables carriers to optimise the traffic

throughput in their AAA infrastructure to achieve higher

availability. It is not uncommon for operators to have 500 servers

being used 20% of the time. BIG-IP balances traffic effectively

across all available servers and ensures maximum utilisation. As

a result, mobile network operators avoid the cost of additional

servers and, at the same time, prevent an increase in associated

power and cooling costs.

Where scaling issues exist for AAA, F5 provides protocol-specific

scaling profiles such as Diameter, Radius and LDAP. BIG-IP

also allows network operators to take advantage of layer 7

traffic management.

Given the criticality of the AAA infrastructure, carriers cannot

afford downtime. Yet, for many organisations, AAA represents

a potential single point of failure. The latest version of BIG-IP

offers carrier-class availability with a new, Fast Failover capability

that reduces failover times to fractions of a second.

F5’s VIPRION® chassis is engineered to handle massive volumes

of revenue-generating traffic and is ideal for supporting AAA

infrastructures. It carries PB 200 blades, and more capacity can

be added on demand to provide the throughput needed for

today and the future. Mobile network operators can add servers

to their AAA infrastructure as required, without disruption to

user authentication or loss of revenue from interrupted billing.

7

F5’s VIPRION is a single-box solution for increasing the scale and performance of AAA infrastructures

8

F5’s TMOS® architecture allows subscribers to use multiple services on multiple different networks, via a single access point

WHERE THE GTM FITS IN THE TOPOLOGY

GTM

GPRS INFRASTRUCTURE

CORPORATE 1

BORDERGATEWAY (BG)

BTSNODE B

SMSC HLR/AUCEIR

SERVING GPRSSUPPORT NODE

(SGSN 2G OR 3G)

BILLING SYSTEM

CHARGINGGATEWAY (CG)

BSCRNC

LAWFUL INTERCEPTIONGATEWAY (LIG)

GATEWAY GPRSSUPPORT NODE (GGSN)

FIREWALL FIREWALL

ROUTER

SERVER

LOCAL AREANETWORK

CORPORATE 2SERVER

LOCAL AREANETWORK

ROUTER

FIREWALL

GPRS BACKBONENETWORK(IP BASED)

SS7NETWORK

INTER-PLMNNETWORK

DATA NETWORK(INTERNET)

DATA NETWORK(INTERNET)

Providing appropriate services for different groups of subscribersSoon there will be an almost infinite choice of services available,

but not all customers will want to (or indeed should) have access

to all of them. A key challenge for telecommunications providers,

therefore, is how to dynamically route traffic according to

specific subscriber profiles. Mobile network operators need to be

able to route traffic through the network, giving each individual

subscriber access to precisely the services that he or she has paid

for or is authorised to access.

This is a particularly important issue, given that growing numbers

of children now use mobile communications devices. In many

countries, it is becoming a legal requirement for mobile network

operators to be able to identify minors and restrict their access to

inappropriate services.

F5 offers the only policy-based traffic steering solution that

provides dynamic services for routing subscriber traffic according

to that subscriber’s profile. This capability – and others like it

– is enabled by F5’s iRules event-driven scripting language and

iControl, an open Application Programming Interface (API). Lying

at the heart of all of F5’s solutions, iRules and iControl enable

network managers to specify precisely how mobile traffic is

intercepted, inspected, directed and transformed.

F5’ BIG-IP solutions provide subscriber analytics to help network

operators carry out customer profiling. They can also return

information about each individual subscriber’s traffic, if required.

As a result, operators can use F5 to identify any subscribers who

may not be on the best tariff and offer them a more appropriate

contract to deliver better customer service. Operators can also

identify customers’ preferred services and offer them other

similar services to increase revenue opportunities.

All of F5’s products share an operating system, called TMOS,

which enables intelligent network control. Using TMOS, F5 has

designed an architecture that allows mobile network operators

to give subscribers access to multiple services on multiple

different networks, via a single access point. The F5 devices use

deep packet inspection techniques and dynamically route traffic,

according to the profiles set, through the different networks.

Mobile network operators will have different data centres

around the world and will not necessarily offer all of the same

services from each data centre. F5’s BIG-IP Global Traffic

Manager® (GTM) solution can be used to identify where each

individual subscriber is calling from, what services he or she has

signed up for and which is the best data centre to route the

traffic to. This will not just be the closest data centre; rather it

will be the closest data centre that offers the required services

and is not over-subscribed at this particular point in time.

9

10

Media rich content deliveryThe possibilities are almost endless. 3G, 4G and the networks of the future make it possible for carriers to deliver rich, high quality video and images to a wide variety of portable consumer devices. Mobile phone users are quickly developing an appetite for applications, games and films that they can access from anywhere, at any time.

For the mobile network operators that can deliver these exciting

new applications and media rich services, there is money to be

made. But it’s not just about coming up with a cool new idea. It’s

about being able to deliver a consistently high quality experience

for users, while protecting profit margins. And that presents

further challenges….

VOD IN MEDIA SYSTEMS

CONTROL

MULTICAST C.D.

LSC ROUTER 1

TRANSPORT NETWORK

LSC ROUTER 2

PROBE 2 PVR RECORDINGSTREAMINGPROBE 1

RTSP CONTROL

TV-PROBE MM-PROBE

VoDS (PVR)VoDS n

VIDEO SERVERS HUB

VoDS 1

LCDS 1 y 2 LCDS 1 y 2 SAL

MANAGEMENT

LOCAL SERVICE CENTER

MANAGEMENT VPN

O & M AND CORPORATE

NETWORKS

CENTRAL SERVICES CENTER ACCESS NETWORK

MULTICAST C.D. VPN MULTICAST VPNCONTROL VPN

MULTICASTTRANSPORTNETWORK

TV HEAD-END

UNICAST VPNAUDIENCES VPN

Content delivery challenges and F5 solutions:

Delivering richer content, without escalating costsIt’s not simply about giving all subscribers the best bandwidth that

is available, because that will be prohibitively expensive. Instead,

mobile network operators have to be able to offer subscribers

precisely the amount of bandwidth that they need, for the

services they use, when they want to use them and at a price

point they are prepared to pay.

F5’s BIG-IP provides information to the carrier about how much

bandwidth is being used – even down to individual subscriber

level. This information then enables the organisation to provision

the network appropriately, and allocate the right amount of

bandwidth to those subscribers who need it, minute by minute.

Through the use of F5-enabled policy-based traffic steering, a

subscriber’s video traffic would be routed to the appropriate

server for that subscriber’s level of service. However, that

subscriber’s web request might be routed to an appropriate

acceleration device to reduce server delay. F5 therefore

intelligently manages subscriber traffic across circuits to deliver

richer content and a better customer experience.

Whatever the challenges of delivering richer content,

F5’s TMOS operating system and the iRules programming

interface provide simple solutions. Together, they provide the

ability for mobile network operators to build solutions that

are functionally effective and operationally efficient – yet

also administratively very simple. When the market moves,

organisations can react quickly, make decisions about how

to direct traffic, launch new 4G offerings and solve problems

more easily. With the greater operational insight and flexibility

afforded by F5 solutions, carriers can grow quickly, wisely and

economically.

11

12

With its automatic failover and intelligent traffic management capabilities, F5 solutions ensure a high quality experience for subscribers

Ensuring consistently high quality of service for video streamingQuality of service (QoS) – or, as it is increasingly being termed,

Quality of Experience (QoE) – will be the new battle ground for

mobile network operators. While price will remain an important

means of attracting new customers, these subscribers will quickly

change their network and service provider if their experience

doesn’t live up to their expectations.

Some mobile network providers have been offering limited

streaming services for quite some time. However, with the

increasing popularity of devices such as the iPhone and

Blackberry, subscribers are no longer just content with streaming

YouTube clips and short ‘how to’ tutorials. They want to

follow live sports coverage and even watch the latest movie

blockbusters on their phones. What is more, if they cannot

see the latest World Cup football match, in clear quality, as it

happens, they will be quick to complain.

Mobile network operators therefore have to be able to deliver

enough bandwidth to meet subscribers’ expectations and needs.

This means differentiating between those subscribers who are

streaming video and those who are making a voice call, using

email or sending an image via SMS.

F5’s BIG-IP products help mobile network operators to serve

images and sound properly because they understand the type of

client that each customer is using and serve the most appropriate

format of content for the client.

F5 solutions can also help mobile network operators cope with

peak time usage and spikes in demand, such as during sports

finals and following unexpected world events. After all, a service

that works perfectly for five thousand concurrent customers

could easily fail for 50 thousand. BIG-IP helps network operators

to grow efficiently their service capabilities at short notice and

furnish users with the same quality of service, regardless of

whether there is low or high demand.

In the event of an unexpected fault in a service or failure at

a data centre, BIG-IP solutions automatically detect outages

and instantly reconnect users to another service source that

can guarantee the supply of the image, video or other service,

whether that is from a server in the same data centre or indeed

another data centre. In this way, F5 helps to guarantee the

continuation of service and contributes to high levels of

customer satisfaction.

HSS

‘IMS DATA’

HLR/AuC (’C5/P5’) SLF

APPLICATIONS

SIP ASOSA ASCAMEL SE

3GPP R7/TISPAN R1

3GPP R6

3GPP R5

AS

SIP AS IM SSF OSA SCS

SERVICE/APPLICATIONS LAYER

TRANSPORT LAYER

BGCF

SGW

IPv4 PDN(IPv4 Network)

WLAN WAGUE

KEYIMS SESSION SIGNALLING

IMS USER PLANE DATA

IMS LAYER

CSCF

CS NETWORKS(PSTN, CS PLMN)

IMS-MGW

MGCFS-CSCF I-CSCF P-CSCF

NASS SPDF/A-RACF

PDF IMS GW

ALG

TrGW

MRF

MRFC

MRFPWLAN PDG

IPv6 PDN(IPv6 Network)BB

(IP v4/IPv6)BGPEFRAN SGSN GCSNUE

UE DSLAM BAS

MOBILE SERVICES INFRASTRUCTURE

13

14

AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ARX SOLUTIONS CAN SIMPLIFY ACCESS TO DATA WITH FILE VIRTUALISATION

UNIFIED STORAGE POOL

NetApp | HP | EMC2 | IBM | SUN | DELL | Windows | Linux

APPLICATIONS AND USERS

INTELLIGENT FILE VIRTUALISATION

ARX

After ARX—File storage environment with intelligent file virtualisation

Before ARX—Current file storage environment

NAS AND FILE SERVERS

STATICMAPPINGS/

MOUNTPOINTS

NetApp | HP | EMC2 | IBM | SUN | DELL | Windows | Linux

APPLICATIONS AND USERS

IP NETWORK

Responding to growing demand for real-time messagingMost large mobile network operators offer a proprietary instant

messaging platform that enables its subscribers to engage

in real-time communications using their hand-held devices.

However, these platforms are starting to show signs of strain.

All around the world, consumers are upgrading their mobile

handsets and gaining access to instant messaging capabilities for

the first time. Carriers are therefore attracting growing numbers

of instant messaging users – and it’s not just one or two new

users a month; it’s thousands.

As a result of this steady increase in demand for instant

messaging, many carriers are having to review their existing

systems and formulate strategies to substantially upgrade them

or even completely replace them with more robust and scalable

systems that can handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent

users. But such a drastic course of action may not be necessary.

The use of F5’s BIG-IP solutions can help to off load some of the

burden from instant messaging servers, enabling them to handle

more users more efficiently.

In many countries, mobile network operators have a legal

requirement to store all instant messages for a fixed period

of time. Other organisations offer message archives as a user

feature. As user numbers grow, and the frequency of usage

increases, carriers will need to expand their storage capacity.

F5 file virtualisation solution ARX® simplifies data management

further by providing automated, policy-based management

across heterogeneous storage environments. The end result is

reduced storage expenditures and management overhead, and

accelerated business workflows.

15

The use of F5’s BIG-IP solutions can help to offload some of the burden from instant messaging servers, enabling them to handle more users more efficiently

16

F5 solutions can control traffic according to business demands, service type and customer requirements

An intelligent architectureBy placing F5 solutions at the very heart of their mobile delivery

network architecture, carriers will realise benefits right across

their business. They will improve bandwidth utilisation to

deliver a better service to existing subscribers and facilitate

the delivery of innovative media rich services to attract to new

subscribers. At the same time, they will improve return on their

existing investment in infrastructure, which allows cost efficient

business growth.

As explained in the previous pages and illustrated in the

architecture diagram below, our solutions:

• Scale AAA systems and facilitate custom handling of messages

• Provide intelligent load balancing with built-in profiles to

address requirements in RADUIS, LDAP and DIAMETER

• Steer traffic according to subscriber policy information supplied

by AAA systems or third party policy decision systems

• Improve bandwidth utilisation

• Perform subscriber traffic analyses

• Offer advanced network connection management capabilities

that solve many system routing and incompatibility challenges.

17

VIPRION

VIPRION

3G

WiMax

4G

LTE

OPERATOR OSS/BSS SERVICES

REDUNDANT F5 LTMFOR HA, SCALABILITY,DPI ENGINE & POLICYENFORCEMENT POINT

LOGGING SERVERSMOBILE INTERNETSERVICES PLATFORM

DPI

EN

GIN

E

GGSN

AAA SERVICES:RADIUS, DIAMETER, LDAP

INTERNET SITESCONTENT

KEYPOLICY COMMUNICATION

OPTIMIZED TRAFFIC

AAA SERVICES

NON-OPTIMIZED TRAFFIC

MANAGEMENT TRAFFIC

HIGH-SPEED LOGGING

ARCHITECTURE

SummaryF5 solutions:

• Scale effortlessly to handle millions of subscribers

• Contribute to a lower total cost of IT ownership

• Maximise the available bandwidth in existing systems

• Enable subscriber profiling and the delivery of new revenue-generating services

• Ensure high quality customer experience

• Can scale capacity and perform ahead of customer demand

• Provide intelligent traffic steering

• Help to cope with data traffic explosion

• Improve organisations profitability

• Are easy to deploy

About F5:

F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery

Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and

fast delivery of applications. F5’s flexible architectural framework

enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations

enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate

true business value. F5’s vision of unified application and data

delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in

how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of

application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining

application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise

organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content

providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward.

International HQRegional HQ / support centreProduct developmentF5 regional office

GLOBAL OPERATIONS

Seatle

Americas

EMEA

Japan

APAC

18

Find out more at: www.f5.com/solutions/industry/telecom/

AAA   global   hardware   scalability   e-commerce   MMS   JavaScript   video      managed  hosting      capacity      acceleration      optimization      encryption   replication   access   IMS   gateway   SNMP   firewall   WAN   consolidation   LTE   iRules   storage tiering   rate shaping   agility   switch   intelligence   intrusion detection      unified  access      reverse      SaaS      stream      code      download   offloading   open source   traffic   virtualization-ready   anti-phishing   syslog   technology     anti-virus     NGIN     VPN     DNS     email     application delivery   computing     disaster recovery     provisioning     CPU     HTTP redirect     XHTML   protocol      HTML      VoIP      wiki      dynamic  infrastructure      DMZ      iControl   enterprise   HTTPS   policy   plug-in   SSL   software   decryption   data center   denial of service   source   persistence   security   application security   web 4G   services   cloud computing   proxy   architecture   server   persistence   SNAT   development    compression   asymmetric   remote access   symmetric   automated tiering    best practices    performance     IPTV   availability     pool   backup   web 2.0   bandwidth   infrastructure   redirect   blog   business continuity      caching      content      XSS      convergence      HSS      cookie   SIP      adaptability      apps      CSS        browser      IPsec      database      3G                             

© 2010 F5 Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. F5, F5 Networks, the F5 logo, ARX, BIG-IP, GTM, iControl, iRules, TMOS and VIPRION are trademarks or registered trademarks of F5 Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and in certain other countries.

F5 Networks, Inc.Corporate Headquartersinfo@f5.com

F5 Networks, Inc. 401 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119 888-882-4447 www.f5.com

F5 NetworksAsia-Pacificinfo.asia@f5.com

F5 Networks Ltd.Europe/Middle-East/Africaemeainfo@f5.com

F5 NetworksJapan K.K.f5j-info@f5.com