SOLUTION BRIEF

Smart Packet Brokering for

Mobile Network Operators

HIGHLIGHTS The Brocade Next-Generation Network Visibility Solution

••
Next-generation visibility infrastructure
The exponential growth of data traffic poses both considerable risks and
with Brocade Smart Packet Brokering
significant opportunities to mobile operators. While large investments
••Industry-leading programmable are necessary to capitalize on the mobile data opportunity, just adding
packet broker with high port density
(768 10-gigabit Ethernet [GbE], network capacity and increasing coverage does not automatically improve
128 40-GbE, and 64 100-GbE Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), profitability, and subscriber loyalty.
wire-speed ports) Maximizing the ROI on investments requires operators to consistently
••Software-based control entity meet customer expectations and offer differentiated services. To this end,
dynamically and intelligently
mobile operators are investing in tools that monitor network performance,
reprograms flows on the Brocade
MLXe Packet Brokers
security, congestion, service experience, and subscriber behavior.

••Real-time traffic engineering based on
subscriber, application, network, and
device parameters
••GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) and
Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)
correlation functions that reduce
analytics tool scale-up costs by up to
50 percent
To feed the ever-growing number of monitoring and analytics tools, operators deploy
Network Packet Brokers (NPBs), which aggregate, replicate, filter, and forward network
traffic to analytics tool farms. The current generation of NPBs are monolithic, inflexible,
and hardware-based, requiring manual reprogramming or reconfiguration when new
traffic recipients are introduced or when forwarding rules need to be modified. Moreover,
these legacy NPBs are expensive and time-consuming to scale.

The Brocade Solution The Brocade solution consists of an

As networks transition to agile and
scalable architectures, their network
visibility infrastructures need to evolve
alongside to remain relevant. Brocade
is leading the charge in the transition to
next-generation visibility architectures
(Visibility 2.0) with programmable packet
broker platforms and the Brocade Session
Director. (See Figure 1.)
industry-leading NPB with 64 100-GbE,
128 40-GbE and 768 10-GbE wire-
speed ports (industry-leading
port density) on a single packet
broker platform.
The Brocade Session Director is a patent-
pending scalable, software-based engine
deployed on commodity x86-based
servers. It dynamically and intelligently
 Visibility 1.0
Subscriber A
Mobile
Network
Packet Core
Subscriber B Packet
Broker
Subscriber C
Figure 1. Legacy and Brocade next-generation network visibility architectures.
programs flows in the Brocade MLXe
Packet Brokers in real-time based on
requests received via a tool-facing API.
The TCO Advantage
A study conducted by ACG research
compared the Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) of the Brocade MLXe Packet
Brokers with other NPBs that either had a
controller within their proprietary hardware
platforms or used a specialized appliance
for functions like GTP correlation. (See
Figure 2.) That study showed that the
cost of the Brocade solution was up to
33 percent lower than other packet
brokering solutions with comparable
Figure 2. ACG Research TCO comparison
for NPBs.
2
Analytics Tool Farm
Subscriber A
HTTP
Analyzer
VoIP
Analyzer
Subscriber B
Intrusion
Detection
Custom Subscriber C
App (Billing)
Proprietary HW
features. The cost advantage was
primarily due to the software-based
control engine deployed on commodity
servers, as well as due to the high port
density in the Brocade MLXe Packet
Brokers. (http://acgcc.com/wp-content/
uploads/2015/02/Brocade-NVA-TCO-
Whitepaper_ACG.pdf)
Dynamic Feedback Loop
The unique, service-oriented architecture
of the Brocade solution enables tools to
invoke APIs exposed by Brocade Session
Director, which in turn dynamically
programs Brocade Packet Brokers
to either forward new flows or modify
existing flows that are bound to the
requesting tool.
GTP Correlation
GTP tunnels are used in LTE and
UMTS networks to anchor subscriber
data sessions to a packet data gateway
(PGW/GGSN). Every time a subscriber
connects to a mobile data network, a
GTP tunnel is established between
the packet gateway and a serving
gateway (which connects subscribers in
a specific region or area to the packet
gateway). GTP tunnels encapsulate
user and control traffic to ensure that a
data session stays uninterrupted when
Visibility 2.0
Analytics Tool Farm
Brocade Session
Director
HTTP
Analyzer
Mobile
VoIP
Packet Core Analyzer
Intrusion
Detection
Brocade MLXe
Packet Brokers Custom
App (Billing)
NFV-Based Architecture
Smart Packet Brokering
the subscriber is on the move (and is
connecting to the packet gateway through
different serving gateways).
For analytics tools to effectively process
mobile data, they need to correlate
GTP user and control traffic to maintain
complete session awareness. Because
each tool has to independently correlate
GTP traffic, up to 50 percent of the
collective processing capacity of the
tool farm becomes unavailable for core
functions performed by analytics tools.
Brocade MLXe Packet Brokers offload
the GTP correlation function and provide
correlated traffic to analytics tools, saving
mobile operators up to 50 percent of
cost that they would otherwise incur to
provision additional tool capacity for GTP
correlation. (See Figure 3.)
Blacklisting and Whitelisting
Brocade MLXe Packet Brokers can
examine IP headers inside tunneled traffic.
They can be dynamically configured to
blacklist (discard) or whitelist (forward)
traffic to specific tools based on
application, URL, content type, subscriber
identity, and other criteria. This provides
tools with relevant traffic and frees up
significant compute and storage resources
for core tool functions.
Advanced Traffic Engineering
The Brocade Smart Management
Engine offers a rich set of criteria for
traffic forwarding and filtering, including
subscriber (IMSI, MS-ISDN), application
(protocol, destination URL, content
type), network (home/roaming traffic,
GTP TEID, APN, Radio Access
Technology [RAT]), device (platform:
iOS/Android, smart/feature device), and
other parameters.
Other Value-Added Features
••Load balancing: The Brocade solution
supports load balancing of data traffic
among multiple tool instances based
on a variety of criteria, including tool
load triggers (initiated by the tool
through the smart mobility engine),
serving or packet gateway prefix,
network regions/ zones, etc.
••Header and footer popping: Reduce
compute load on tools by eliminating
headers associated with Multiprotocol
Label Switching (MPLS), Virtual LAN
(VLAN), GTP, and RTP protocols and
providing plain IP traffic.
••Source port labeling: Attach source-
port label tags to traffic to eliminate
redundant processing.
••Inter-Radio Access Technology
(IRAT) handover support: Detect and
dynamically reprogram traffic flows
during session handovers between
2.5G, 3G, and 4G access networks
(or between different 3G RATs).
••Timestamping: Tag packets with
a timestamp to enable at ingress
for performance monitoring and
QoE measurements.
Learn More
Brocade partners with companies of all
sizes to deliver innovative solutions that
help organizations maximize the value of
their most critical information. To learn
more, visit www.brocade.com.
About Brocade
Brocade networking solutions help
organizations achieve their critical
business initiatives as they transition
to a world where applications and
information reside anywhere. Today,
Brocade is extending its proven data
center expertise across the entire
network with open, virtual, and efficient
solutions built for consolidation,
virtualization, and cloud computing.
Learn more at www.brocade.com.

Brocade
Session Director

Analytics Tools
Correlated
GTP traffic
HTTP VOIP
Brocade MLXe Analyzer Analyzer
Packet Brokers
Intrusion DPI
Detection

Uncorrelated
LTE GTP traffic

MME HSS
S11
(GTP-c)
S1-U
(GTP-u) SGW PGW
eNodeB S5 IMS
(GTP-u)

3G

HLR

RNC SGSN GGSN

NodeB Gn Internet

Figure 3. Stateful GTP correlation.

3
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