Optimize Wireless
Networks for Data
Identifying Resource Usage
and Managing Network
Performance with the
Alcatel-Lucent 9900
Wireless Network Guardian
Enabling the Wireless IP Transformation
End users around the world are quickly adopting the
blended lifestyle made possible by accessible and affordable communications that allow them to blur the lines
between work, home life and entertainment. To support
that lifestyle, end users are subscribing to services they
can easily adapt and personalize to their needs on
whatever communications device they choose.
Wireless broadband data services are an important part
of the blended lifestyle equation. They allow end users
to not only place calls and access the Internet with
their wireless devices, but also connect with their office
networks over secure links, download music and videos,
and take advantage of a host of location-based services
that give them access to home, work and entertainment
from anywhere and at any time.
Fueling this evolution in communication are new
IP-enabled cell phones and laptop air cards that,
when combined with new data pricing plans, have
made using wireless broadband data services more
affordable. As a result, wireless service providers
worldwide are beginning to experience measurable
subscriber uptake for these services. The wireless IP
transformation is here and now.
But while all this is good news from a business perspective, the increase in data traffic is creating concerns about
how IP packet data affects wireless networks. Since IP
applications were not designed for transmission over a
wireless infrastructure, it is no surprise that some of these
applications consume significant amounts of resources
in the wireless network. In addition to bandwidth, these
applications consume signaling, radio frequency (RF)
channels, airtime, and backhaul resources. The performance of wireless IP networks is intimately coupled to the
types of applications the network transports, and in a
complex way.
To accommodate the IP load, and enable resilient and robust
delivery of emerging applications, wireless service providers
need complete visibility of how every behavior and flow —
resolved to individual devices and servers — places load
on the network. This is a paradigm shift in how IP networks
are currently built. This new visibility means the service
provider can effectively optimize their wireless networks
to deliver the continuously evolving list of applications.
Identify Resource Usage
and Manage the Network
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Wireless Network Guardian
(WNG) offers powerful capabilities for monitoring
2.5G, 3G and 4G wireless data networks. It identifies
wireless network resource usage and allows you to better
manage network performance. And it allows you to protect your networks from degraded performance and outages
that can arise from transmitting wireless-unfriendly IP
traffic.
This advanced wireless network monitoring product
provides detailed information about how every subscriber,
application, server, and flow creates actual load on your
wireless data network, and delivers alerts about any
behaviors that have an anomalous impact on network
performance and capacity.
“There is no shortage of tools on the market that provide traffic analysis for wireless
operators. Much less common, however, are tools that go beyond simply identifying
traffic types or usage and provide visibility into the impact of that traffic on network
performance. Most people believe that going forward — as 3G takes hold and 4G
gets launched — nobody can predict which applications will drive mobile broadband
uptake. If so, tools such as Alcatel-Lucent’s 9900 WNG will be critical for ensuring
that operators can not only head off network threats but also incent applications that
make the most efficient use of network resources."
P E T E R J A R I C H , R E S E A R C H D I R E C T O R , C U R R E N T A N A L Y S I S
Optimize Wireless Networks for Data2
By connecting individual subscribers to resource con-
Base
Station
Radio
Network
Controller
PDSN /
SGSN /
ASN
Airtime Exhaustion Signaling Exhaustion Bandwidth Exhaustion
Core Gateway
Home Agent /
GGSN
AAA
Alcatel-Lucent 9900
Detector
Alcatel-Lucent 9900
Central
Traffic Mirror
sumption, the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG helps you
manage the effects that IP-based applications have on
your wireless network. More importantly, it allows you to
ensure you make the best possible use of your network
and the precious air spectrum between the network
and the mobile endpoints.
With the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG you can:
• Monitor both Internet-mobile and mobile-mobile
traffic
• Access a real-time view of how a subscribers’ usage
(including intended, unintended, and malicious)
translates to load across a wireless data network
• Identify anomalous usage behaviors as they relate
to network performance and availability
• Identify which subscribers, servers, and applications are
contributing to network loads when those loads exceed
prescribed limits
• Perform surgical mitigation and network optimization
via elements in the network
• Manage unwanted activity using bespoke mitigation
strategies, and thereby improves network capacity
utilization
Track Behavior at the Subscriber
and Network Level
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG is offered with two
components that allow you to monitor network behavior
at the subscriber and network level (Figure 1).
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Detector is deployed
in the packet core on a mirrored port:
• Between the packet data serving node-HA (PDSNHA) and PDSN-authentication, authorization and
accounting (AAA) system (PDSN-AAA) in CDMA
networks
• Between the serving general packet radio system
(GPRS) support node (SGSN)-gateway GPRS
support node (SGSN-GGSN) and SGSN-AAA
in GPRS/UMTS networks
• Between the access service node-home agent
(ASN-HA), ASN-AAA in WiMAX networks
Figure 1. Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Correlates Subscriber Traffic, Network Performance, and Behavioral Anomalies in One Solution
3Optimize Wireless Networks for Data
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Detector is:
• Based on a technology-leading 2RU-high 500mm
deep server with integrated field programmable gate
array (FPGA)-based network interfaces, and currently
supports 2 million packets per second data, 1 million
active sessions and 5 million concurrent flows
• Based on NEBS-3 platforms
• Depends only on the ingress data feeds from the
Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Detector, and does not
rely on any other inbound feeds
• Provides simple network management protocol (SNMP)
traps and SysLogs for interoperability with the existing
network management or security event management
systems
In addition, the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG supports
multi-vendor wireless networks, and can simultaneously
support multiple air-interface protocols.
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Central is deployed
in a network or security operations center, and receives
event streams from all deployed Alcatel-Lucent 9900
WNG Detectors.
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Central is:
• Based on a technology-leading server with integrated
FPGA-based network interfaces, and currently supports
a feed of 10,000 events per second, which typically translates to 10 Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG Detectors,
depending on specific network conditions
Leverage Comprehensive, Experienced
Professional Services
The Alcatel-Lucent Professional Services group can
help your teams deploy the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG
so that you get maximum advantage from its capabilities.
The services available include everything from performing installation and configuration to analyzing findings
and recommending strategies to optimizing network
resources and security controls.
Additionally, Alcatel-Lucent security assessment
capabilities for wireless service providers are enhanced
with the use of the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG, and
deliver more comprehensive wireless-specific insights
that can help you protect your network and subscribers.
Optimize Wireless Networks for Data4
E-mail Devices
Wireless Data Traffic by Bandwidth
(24-hour period)
Wireless Data Traffic by Airtime
(24-hour period)
APP #2 Devices WAP HTTP Other P2P
Enhance End-to-End Business Operations
By deploying the Alcatel-Lucent
9900 WNG in your network you can
enhance end-to-end business operations, from network performance to
marketing.
Improve Network Performance
All applications that run on IP networks are traditionally reduced to a
single dimension — volume (or bandwidth). Quite simply, “data is data”.
As wireless networks become more
IP-like — both in terms of technology and how subscribers use those
networks — experience suggests we
can design, engineer, optimize, manage, and price the networks by this
dimension, bandwidth.
This operating principle is fundamentally unsound in wireless IP
networks. Two applications that
may consume exactly the same
bandwidth may have widely disproportionate impacts on other critical
resources in the network, such as
airtime (Figure 2).
Every IP application that transmits
over the wireless data network
consumes many different resources in
the network. Service providers need
to still scale applications by bandwidth, but must also scale other
resources, such as radio-access
airtime, device-network signaling
and base station channels.
Data is no longer “just data” on
wireless IP networks. And that
means to properly design, engineer,
optimize, manage, price, and
ultimately differentiate NGN
Wireless IP networks, service
providers must have never-beforerequired visibility into how packets
and flows impact every constrained
resource in the wireless network —
from the packet core all the way
down into the radio access network.
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG is
the first product to market in a new
product category, which enables
wireless operators to operationally
connect IP-layer behaviors to
Wireless-layer impacts, and to optimize, manage, and build out their
networks accordingly
In addition, an optional managed
service component can relieve your
network operations personnel of the
burden of monitoring the network
for performance-impacting events.
This helps you defer or postpone
costs associated with training and
developing the subject matter
experts required to leverage the
forensic/root-cause analysis capability of the Alcatel-Lucent 9900
WNG and propose/implement
mitigation policies.
Figure 2. Bandwidth and Airtime in Wireless IP networks
5Optimize Wireless Networks for Data
Streamline Engineering
and Planning
Network planning is based on average models of subscriber usage during
busy hours. It assumes average load
characteristics per subscriber. But
each device, application, and subscriber can have highly differing
and unpredictable impacts on the
network.
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG
helps engineering and planning
teams see exactly how subscribers
in any given region are using the
network, so that the appropriate
resources can be added or reallocated to accommodate the
measured and specific subscriber
activities.
Moreover, by providing detailed
network usage information, the
Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG helps
engineering and planning teams
understand actual usage patterns
and perform a reasonable trending
analysis that can be used to guard
the network against any negative
impacts caused by customer
concentration on certain
applications.
Manage Security
Wireless security requirements are
more challenging than wireline
security because:
• Attacks can be waged on the network using extremely low volume
traffic that masks as every day
traffic (for example, without
packet-specific signatures)
• Attacks can come from within
the wireless data network and
can leverage mobile-to-mobile
communications without crossing
a peering point (where IP security
tools are often deployed)
• The IP address in the mobile
world easily and constantly
changes, so tracking potential
attackers is a multi-step challenge
The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG
provides network security teams
with tools specifically designed for
wireless data networks that can help
identify and manage threats and
denials of service.
Develop Targeted Marketing
Beyond network operation, planning
and security, the Alcatel-Lucent 9900
WNG can also enhance marketing
efforts that directly contribute to
subscriber retention and reduce churn.
With the detailed network performance and subscriber information
available from the Alcatel-Lucent
9900 WNG, marketing teams can
get a better understanding of how
much it costs the network to support
every subscriber, every application,
and every device type. With this
information, marketers can
determine an ROI for each existing
and new service, based not only on
the cost of the subsidized device or
application royalties (if customerhosted), but also the fundamental
cost to the network.
As a result, you can choose devices
and applications that enable maximum profitability for your market.
Optimize Wireless Networks for Data6
Partner With the Networking Leader
Alcatel-Lucent has set the pace for
change in communications networking technologies. We continue to
innovate by combining what is possible in science and technology with
what is required by the markets.
With one of the largest global R&D
capabilities in the communications
industry, as well as our renowned
Bell Labs research community, we
help bring our customers to the
forefront of technical innovation
every day.
Through our research facilities in
14 different countries we have
invested more than $3.6 billion in
R&D and secured more than 25,000
patents.
The Bell Labs record for innovation
is unmatched and includes development of transformational technologies such as the transistor, the laser,
the solar cell, HDTV, and remote
laptop security solutions. No other
vendor in the industry can match
this depth and record of research
and innovation.
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs has
been pioneering work in the area of
Wireless Behaviors Research. It is here
where the harmonic balance between
“always-on” applications and a “justin-time” network became obvious.
Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, the newbusiness incubator for AlcatelLucent, moved fast to address the
needs of global operators with Bell
Labs Technology.
They built an internal startup
charged with developing the first
product aimed at closing this gap.
If you’re looking to optimize your wireless network to efficiently handle IP-based data
traffic, look no further than the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG. For more information, please
visit www.alcatel-lucent.com/wng.
In less than twelve months, they’ve
transformed years of research into
the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 WNG.
Beyond research, Alcatel-Lucent
recognizes that it takes the right
combination of customer services,
applications and infrastructure to
successfully apply technical innovations that enable new business
models that improve customer
relationships, increase employee
productivity and are more adaptive
to changing markets.
As a proven telecom partner, we
also bring our extensive experience
in delivering large, multi-vendor,
multi-technology solutions to
organizations around the globe.
7Optimize Wireless Networks for Data
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are trademarks of Alcatel-Lucent. All other trademarks are the proper ty of their respecti ve owners.
The information presented is subj ect to change without notice. Alcatel -Lucent assumes no responsibility
for inaccuracies contained herein. © 2008 Alcatel-Lucent. All rights reser ved. CMO2888080814 (09)
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