Metaswitch: VoLTE Automation by Nicole Drain

VoLTE Automation Key to Increased Revenue February 2018

Contents Who Needs VoLTE Network Automation Anyway?

Speed to Revenue and TCO Savings Through Automation – the Goal of Cloud Native VoLTE

The Spectrum of Approaches to Automation

Deployment

Healing Scaling

Upgrade Cloud Native VNFs – Essential Operational Functions

A True Cloud Native VoLTE Solution

Rhino Telephony Application Server (TAS)

Clearwater IMS Core

Media Resource Function (MRF)

Evolved Packet Data Gateway (EPDG)

Perimeta Virtualized SBC

Converged Network Message Store (CNMS)

SAS Real Time Analytics

Deploy VoLTE. Be Cloud Native. Buy Metaswitch

Cloud Native Leadership: Delivering on NFV Benefits Why Work with Metaswitch?

Who Needs VoLTE Network Automation Anyway? Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is an essential network technology evolution for service providers to realize maximum spectrum efficiency and migrate to IP-based networking. It is quickly becoming a mainstream service offering, now launched by over 100 service providers. Yet VoLTE is also sometimes accused of delivering only the same – or sometimes lesser – service than is available on 3G circuit-switched networks.

projects are compromised and fail to deliver these benefits due to poorly architected Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) - a result of quickly ported software from the legacy physical appliances.

To reap the promised benefits, service providers must focus on moving resources – people, time, money – towards rapid service creation and therefore move the VNF management lifecycle towards automation; they must employ cloud native software that is purpose-built for cloud and delivers on agility. Scaling and operation automation allows service providers to choose best in class components and most importantly leaves the monolithic software, paradigm, and problems behind. A completely automated VoLTE network is now a necessity for focussing on revenue generation. It enables large and small service providers to differentiate their service offerings, monetize on targeted, vertical offerings as well as expand into new Cloud-native VoLTE is now a reality and being ad- emerging markets, and ultimately transform netopted widely, from Tier 1 to smaller, regional oper- work services into high scale revenue platforms. ators. In all cases, service providers are hungry for the benefits promised by the adoption of Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Too often their NFV However, VoLTE can be much more than just a necessary cost. In fact, a genuine cloud-native approach to VoLTE leads to achieving web scale with Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings and vastly increased speed of service innovation. This innovation is powered by microservices and open APIs around e.g. unified communications, B2C engagement, wearables and Cloud Platform as a Service (CPaaS). When combined, these benefits create the environment for game-changing, revenue-generating business innovation and prepare your entire organization for the next wave of 5G digital transformation.

A completely automated VoLTE network is now a necessity for focusing on revenue generation.

Speed to Revenue and TCO Savings Through Automation – the Goal of Cloud Native VoLTE NFV radically changes the way communication networks are designed, built and operated, with the intention of reducing capex and opex costs, and increasing service agility. The early drivers for NFV emphasized the benefits of hardware and CAPEX cost reduction but service providers are now prioritizing the potential gains in operational efficiency and rapid service innovation. Service providers expect NFV to deliver faster development cycles with lower operational risk. They also require efficient resource utilization, such as enabling application sharing and the reuse of VNF components. Service providers also expect a more flexible and agile approach to network and capacity deployment that allows them to start small and scale on demand. The ability to realize the expected efficiency and agility benefits of a true cloud native VoLTE deployment is determined by many different components of the system, including the cloud infrastructure and the service provider’s processes and organization, but most importantly by the VNFs themselves where any lack of operational automation functionality will directly impact the three key revenue generating and cost saving opportunities.

Speed of Deployment

One of the attractions of NFV is that network applications can be instantiated rapidly so that new services can be launched in a matter of hours or days, rather than weeks or months (as with dedicated appliances). The quicker the service is deployed, the quicker the value of the service can be determined (by subscriber usage), the shorter the time to realize additional new revenue streams.

Resource Management

Over specification of network resources for “just in case” or for peak events is a clear cost that’s ripe for elimination. With VNF automation, resources can be instantiated (and paid for) on demand, leading to cost optimization on a pay-as-you-go basis – rather than with capex style up-front costs.

Removal of Human Error

Network outages cost money in terms of repair and in terms of reduced revenue from service usage. It’s said that as many as 2 in every 3 network outages are caused by human error during normal operations. VNF automation provides the perfect opportunity to reduce or remove the human element from the equation and work towards eradicating the costs associated with this aspect of ownership.

The Spectrum of Approaches to Automation For service providers to reach these goals, VNFs need to use resources efficiently and support operations automation. Automation is the key to simplifying the management of cloud native network deployments. If we simply move software from a physical appliance to execute in a virtual machine (VM), that will make little practical difference to the complexity of managing the network. In fact, doing so without sufficient focus on automating the lifecycle operations may add further layers and operational steps, increasing the costs despite replacing the proprietary hardware with commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) alternatives. As networks get ever larger and more complex, it is increasingly important that the VNFs themselves are rearchitected to enable simple automation of such operations.

Key benefit from NFV Healing

Automation of VNFs can be applied to any of the four key operational phases of a VNF:

Scaling

Deployment: dealing with onboarding, instantiation, and configuration Upgrade

Instantiation

Key enabler for Dev-Ops How far do you want to go? Figure 1 Steps towards Aggressive Cloud DevOps

Cloudbursting

Relevance depends on service

Upgrade: replacing VNFs and management the development cycle Healing: recovering from failure, re-establishing the virtual topology Scaling: adapting to change in demand and management of overload conditions

Deployment This initial stage of the VNF lifecycle must be completely automated. By encompassing initial service configuration — one of the most manual, time-consuming activities for many applications — the service provider is assured that the VNF has been deployed in an error-free manner. It is then ready for automated scaling or topology changes based on a known configuration model. By successful automation of the initial deployment a service provider can attain the expected flexibility and at the same time reduce the complexity of later operational phases, and therefore minimize the overall operational risk during service lifetime.

Healing When a VNF is running in a ‘steady state’ situation and an undefined external or internal conditions changes the VNF’s state, the expected healing behavior is to re-establish the previous topology as quickly as possible. This healing may be achieved by immediately fixing a failed instance, or more generally, creating a new instance of the failed component. The failure can be detected at different levels and it is the responsibility of proper instrumentation that these events are signaled immediately to related components. The VNF should bring new instances of VNF components into the deployment topology, as needed to re-establish the target state. This implies the ability to properly configure and integrate them with surrounding systems, and, if needed, with the networking context.

Scaling In general, scaling should be a completely automated operation. Efficient scaling with automation requires that the following conditions be met. KPIs must accurately reflect resource use, and be updated in a timely manner. The execution time of the scaling actions is in line with the dynamic of the characteristic to be controlled, or efficiency may be lost. “Scale-in” action is essential for efficiency but may be more complex than scale-out if the VNF is stateful. If the VNF has several distinct components, with different scaling logic based on different aspects of the traffic load (e.g. concurrent registrations vs transactions-per-second), it shall be possible to change them independently. The change overhead (on the management of the infrastructure) shall be kept to a minimum to reduce complexity and aid timely reaction to changes in traffic load.

Upgrade The upgrade of a VNF is a relevant part of its lifecycle and one that requires careful planning because of its complexity and the operational risk implied. It is very important to reduce, as much as possible, the complexity of upgrade to simplify and lower the risk of more frequent development cycles for the function or application. The cloud offers the possibility of deploying very small instances of a function quickly and easily. Web-scale players use this to allow them to upgrade a small portion of their user base to a new level initially, monitor that community intensively to validate the upgrade is good, and then apply it more widely. Service providers can apply the same approach by temporarily segmenting their subscriber base during any upgrade, and can achieve this with little or no cost in terms of resources, reducing the risk of a flash-cut to the new system for the entire user base.

Cloud Native VNFs – Essential Operational Functions Just as it’s not enough to simply move software to virtual machines and expect them to produce cost savings, that same software must also satisfy several functional requirements before it can be considered a true VNF, ready for Cloud Native deployment.

1 2 3

Instrumentation

VNFs must maintain and make available a complete set of information related to its deployment status and to the service it provides. The dynamic and timely nature of this information is essential for closedloop automation to be effective.

Self-Management and Abstraction

VNFs must not assume a higher level of management (e.g. orchestration in the ETSI NFV MANO framework) or support any level of complexity or granularity of control to manage lifecycle operations for the application. Where application domain-specific knowledge is required to complete an action correctly, the VNF itself should handle that complexity.

4 5 6 7

Discovery and Announcement

Efficient cloud deployment models result in a very dynamic network status, with each node and service potentially scaling or being upgraded independently, in addition to network topology changes due to site or cloud failures. Relying on manual or scripted mechanisms to keep pace with such change is not tenable therefore VNFs should provide mechanisms to manage those dynamics.

Scaling and Load Distribution

VNFs typically meet demand by horizontal scaling i.e. by adding or taking down instances of the required components. For this to function well in a cloud with efficient resource usage, VNFs need to spread the load across the multiple VNFC instances, evenly distribute the load on components under normal traffic patterns, reallocate load during scaling operations and avoid focused overload.

Efficient Resource Usage

It should be a clear target and major performance indicator for any VNF to make efficient use of the cloud resources. All the resources required by all the VNFs are to be considered. This search for efficiency depends on multiple criteria and on the efficiency of any single component.

Minimum Resource Footprint

VNFs must tightly fit the resource demand (without waste), scale down elegantly, be as small as possible (for optimal cloud utilization) and only request the resources they need.

Dynamic Scalability

Adding or removing VNF components should be as simple and as fast as possible. This allows resource usage to closely follow any demand curve. VNF components should scale per their own needs to meet this target.

Resiliency Mechanism

The ideal VNF design for cloud uses N+k active-active redundancy model where both N and k are configurable. If suited to the service delivered by the VNF, the N+k cluster should be able to be spread across sites for maximum hardware efficiency.

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Management vs. Processing Balance

VNFs should maintain a fair balance between resources dedicated to its management and to those processing the demand. In a scale-out scenario, the needs of demand processing should dominate.

Contention of Resources

Network functions tend to peak at the same time, preventing the use of over-committed resources. The advent of new cloud and service paradigms (such as network slicing) allow service providers to choose to manage contention via a common pool of reserved resources, or by light overprovision on specific resources types.

State Handling

A cloud native VNF’s design will separate state into a distributed database, with stateless compute nodes processing traffic based on, and updating, that stored state. This eases load balancing and separates the scaling of the compute cluster and database processing per the dynamic needs of the traffic model.

Deploy

Healing

Scale/ Move

Change/ Upgrade

Overload

Devops Cycle

Instrumentation

Self-Management

Discovery

Load-balancing

Resource use

Minimize Special Paths

Rigorous API and Database Versioning

Cloud network functions are typically split into multiple subcomponents or microservices. For this approach to work well with automated operations such as scaling, healing and upgrade across multiple sites, all interfaces to the function and between subcomponents must be clearly defined and allow different versions to coexist with defined behavior to enable an in-place upgrade.

State handling

Versioning

Figure 2 Importance of Automation Aspects

Critical

Important

Less Important

A True Cloud Native VoLTE Solution Metaswitch is the voice domain expert with years of experience and expertise in delivering mobile, business and fixed communication. This translates into our compelling value proposition at every layer of our VoLTE stack. Widely deployed globally, Perimeta SBC is the industry benchmark for virtual SBC, proven to provide security and signaling integrity under enormous loads.

Beyond VoLTE

The world first and only cloud native IMS core, Clearwater, selected by T1 service providers to lead the transformation to the cloud and used by NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) ecosystem as the reference, best practice VNF. • • •

And finally, Rhino TAS, playing an instrumental role in service layer transformation. Addressing legacy service interworking, seamless integration with existing network components and also delivering unrivalled service agility via open SDK.

Targeting Contextual, Personalized and Real-time Commnication RCS, MVM, and CNMS for Messaging enablers Open Service Strategy: New Business Models and Partnership

Complete VoLTE Stack

Revenue Platforms VoLTE TAS

• • •

Complete IR.92/IR.94 VoLTE & VoWiFi Solution Un-mateched Experience in All-IP Service Layer Transformation Open and Extendible Framework for Service Agility

Services vIMS

• • •

Established Mindshare (Clearwater) Lead Transformation to the Cloud (VNF MANO Reference) World’s First unique and truly Cloud Native Native VNF

vSBC

• • •

Market Leader (Current Analysis) Industry benchmark for vSBC, T1 References NFV-Ready, Scalable, Flexible

Core Network

The openness of the Metaswitch VoLTE solution represents not only the ability to create new services but also to modify existing services, putting service providers in control of the service roadmap and enabling them to differentiate at a very competitive price.

Rhino Telephony Application Server (TAS) Metaswitch Rhino TAS Application Server is an open platform for service layer convergence, bridging circuit-switched and packet-switched networks and harmonizing the service layer to deliver a consistent user experience, regardless of which network a service provider’s subscribers are attached to. In the VoLTE Solution Rhino TAS is a critical component not only realizing IR.92 VoLTE, IR.51 VoWiFi, and IR.92 ViLTE services but enabling Service Providers to truly transform their service layer into a revenue-generating platform. Rhino TAS implements following functions in the VoLTE network: Multimedia Telephony Application Server (MMTel) MMTel (multimedia telephony applications) delivers the core call control services for voice and video communications, as well as the supplementary services for VoLTE (equivalent to the switch and supplementary services in GSM). Rhino TAS delivers these services in an LTE/IMS network, following the standards-based architectural blueprint for implementing VoLTE. Service Centralization and Continuity Application Server Service Centralization and Continuity Application Server (SCC AS) implements session anchoring in the IMS, terminating domain selection and enhanced single radio voice call continuity function (eSRVCC). SCC provides network-based circuit-switched hand-over to the 2G/3G network when there is inadequate LTE radio coverage. IP Short Message Gateway (IPSMGW) IP-SM-GW enables sending and delivery of short messages (SMS) over IMS via LTE and Wi-Fi connections.

As part of VoLTE deployments, Metaswitch technology enables service providers to transform their service layers and move away from the service silos tied to underlying network technology into a flexible and access-independent Converged Service Layer. We have it all - the right technology toolkit as well as the expertise to deliver on complex service layer transformation while at the same time ensuring optimal use of service provider’s investment and resources. Metaswitch Rhino TAS delivers Service Parity with powerful and flexible interworking and protocol translation functions (IM-SSF/rIM-SSF) enabling consistent user experience independently from the access technology. Complemented by the powerful capability to interwork with SS7, IMS and IT networks via multiple out-of-box Resource Adapters (RA) facilitates integration with service providers’ back-end systems. It also enables Service Migration and Service Differentiation empowered by Sentinel OpenCreate, a comprehensive service creation environment for cost-effective service delivery across heterogeneous networks. Complete IR.51, IR.92 and IR.94 MMTel TAS

IN feature parity plus OSS/BSS and billing

Built to be cloud native using web design methods

Fully integrated service creation framework

A circuit to packet-switched migration platform

Open standards eliminate vendor lock-in

Clearwater IMS Core Since its inception, Project Clearwater - a cloud-native IMS core implementation introduced to the open source community by Metaswitch Networks in 2013 - has been a prominent choice for vIMS based on NFV specifications. Architected from the ground up using web design patterns and methods Clearwater is highly scalable, distributed and resilient, meeting the stringent uptime demands of the regulated telephone service provider industry while taking advantage of cloud compute environments originally built for non-real-time applications and services. Clearwater Core provides standard S-CSCF, I-CSCF, and BGCF functional components responsible for session control, subscriber authentication, SIP Routing functions including AS invocation and charging.

Media Resource Function (MRF) The Metaswitch VoLTE Solution leverages Radisys for MRF capabilities. Radisys is a leading market vendor for MRF functionality in the IMS networks deployed in Tier-1 networks worldwide. The MRF media server is a fundamental element in an IP communications network, processing real-time audio and video media streams under the control of Application Servers (AS) in IMS. Media Resource Function Processor and Media Resource Function Control provide media related functions such as media manipulation and playing of tones and announcements.

Evolved Packet Data Gateway (EPDG) The ePDG is enabling technology that allows for secure connectivity between non-3GPP access networks (such as Wi-Fi) and the EPC. The ePDG connects the Wi-Fi-capable UE using IPSec tunnels, provides authentication using AAA and network protection mechanisms and integrates with the EPC PGW via the S2b interface. The ePDG also facilitates seamless mobility between Wi-Fi and LTE access networks.

Perimeta Virtualized SBC Perimeta is the industry benchmark for virtual SBC proven to provide security and signaling integrity under enormous loads. Perimeta is not only the most widely deployed decoupled SBC; but also has a number of “industry first” achievements such as first SBC to offer network-wide licensing, first designed for MANO and first to offer cloud DSPs for transcoding. Perimeta has been deployed for access and interconnect scenarios by the world’s largest service providers. Perimeta SBC has been proven to lead in security functions and is capable of withstanding any attacks; whether DDOS, fuzzing or a combination thereof; while processing legitimate traffic at wire speed. Additional security elements provided by Perimeta include encryption, authentication and sophisticated functions such as dynamic blacklisting. Recognizing the “ephemeral” nature of the cloud - Perimeta SBC comes with built-in analytics toolkit to properly identify, diagnose and solve a problem as well as report on the most important KPIs and analytics needed to provide desired QoE. Perimeta SBC has been field proven to realize VoLTE, VoWiFi, RCS use cases as well as provide support for the emerging VoLTE Roaming and Peering scenarios.

A pure cloud native virtualized network function

Powerful transcoding and message manipulation

Architected for distributed signaling and media

Real-time KPI monitoring and deep analytics

Proven performance under heavy loads and attacks

Works with independent VNF managers and MANO

Perimeta is the first cloud native virtualized session border controller (vSBC) proven to deliver the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) interworking and security performance demanded of large-scale rich communications services.

Converged Network Message Store The Converged Network Message Store (CNMS) from Metaswitch lets network operators leverage their investments in IP and NFV to innovate in messaging again, re-establishing subscriber engagement on their messaging interfaces while creating new revenue-generating applications. The CNMS manages presence information and enables users to access their voice, video, text and group chat messages and message history on any device with any OS. Network operators can combine these functions to provide innovative applications on a user’s smartphone, tablet, PC, smartwatch or connected car interface. • • • • • •

Cloud native VNFs Stores voicemail, text, M2M and video messages Indexes messages for rapid search Standards-based Open APIs Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) RESTful API for network message stores

SAS Real-Time Analytics With the always-on Metaswitch Service Assurance Server (SAS) Analytics platform, service providers also have a powerful, proactive troubleshooting tool at their fingertips. It is possible to trace calls for quality-of-service (QoS) purposes or decode individual SIP messages to identify interoperability issues. This feature is a critical component of any virtualized deployments, providing the means to monitor individual elements that could be widely distributed across the network. Fully virtualized SAS eliminates hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost per node vs. deploying probes.

Rhino Open TAS MMTel SCC IP SM GW

MaX

Messaging Management

CPM RCS

API

MVM MVS

Sentinel OpenCreate

CNMS

Analytics SAS

S-CSCF P-CSCF E-CSCF ATCF EATF

I-CSCF

Orchestration

CCF

VNFM

I-BCF

UDM BGCF

Clearwater Core

HSS

ENUM IMS-AGW EATF ATGW

ePDG

Perimeta SBC

Control Plane

Media Plane

MGCF MGW

TrGW

UMG

Perimeta SBC

Dev Platforms

PCRF

Partner

Deploy VoLTE. Be Cloud Native. Buy Metaswitch.

Metaswitch is the world’s leading cloud native communications software company. Metaswitch offers a completely different approach to NFV, fully embracing the same web-scale design paradigms exploited by all the leaders in Cloud, such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix -delivering real savings reliably, and quickly. We call it Cloud Native. Cloud native is a label easily applied to a product, but few vendors understand what is really needed to deliver true cloud native VNFs. Metaswitch has been the leading NFV innovator since early 2011. We have unique expertise derived from many NFV projects. We deliver cloud native VoLTE and IMS as well as offer concise and insightful cloud native consultancy. When combined, these principles represent a completely new approach to delivering a service. The “old” approach was to concentrate on building a network of familiar types of boxes, possibly virtualized. Now, service providers with real-world experience of NFV have realized that they need to think about how to deliver the complete service most efficiently.

Cloud-Native Leadership: Delivering On NFV Benefits Metaswitch delivers a complete suite of software-based, open and scalable network functions that enable visionary service providers to stay relevant by radically transforming their network operations and rapidly introducing new applications and services. We are disrupting network architectures, business models and vendor incumbency for some of the largest service providers in the world - AT&T named Metaswitch as a disruptor, and one of the first Domain 2.0 vendors. Our cloud native communications software is designed from the ground up to run on commodity hardware in private, public and hybrid clouds. It enables service providers to fully realize the breakthrough economic, speed, simplicity and scale benefits that have been promised by NFV.

We develop commercial and open-source software solutions that are constructively disrupting the way that service providers build, scale, innovate and account for communication services.

Why work with Metaswitch? Let us know if you want to learn more, arrange a demonstration, or get a quote from our sales team

A rich portfolio of cloud native communications software for mobile, fixed and converged networks

A well-earned reputation for continually delivering visionary, industry-first real-time communications software products and solutions

The industry’s best customer care organization

A 30+ year history of providing high-performance, hardware-independent software to the communications industry

Clear leadership in cloud native virtualized network functions (VNFs) and software-defined networking (SDN) solutions

Open source projects that have gained significant industry traction and visibility