Solution Overview

Cisco Policy and Charging Control for Mobile Operators: Efficiently Deploy, Scale, and Manage Services
What You Will Learn
With the dramatic growth of mobile data traffic, mobile operators need a dependable policy and charging control infrastructure to manage this traffic while increasing service revenues. An intelligent policy and charging control solution helps assure the proper allocation of network resources based on what subscribers have purchased and what the network can deliver. The solution also supports the efficient deployment, management, and monetization of basic and advanced service offerings, such as service tiers, day plans, and prepayments. Cisco has built the Cisco Intelligent Policy Control Function (IPCF), a 3 Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) compliant Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), as part of the Cisco Policy and Charging Control (PCC) solution, to address the requirements of operators for intelligent and highly scalable policy and charging control. This inline solution, available on the Cisco ASR 5000 Series multimedia core platform, the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) B-Series Blade Servers, and other server platforms, provides a range of features and three important attributes that are crucial for policy and charging control solutions today: high scalability, system reliability and redundancy, and low latency.
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Challenge
Recent metrics on the growth of mobile traffic reconfirm its dramatic upward trend. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2009-2015 predicts mobile data traffic volumes in 2015 will grow to 26 times what they were in 2010. There will be more than 7.1 billion mobile-connected devices, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, equal to the world's projected population in 2015. The average smartphone will generate 1.3 gigabytes of traffic per month by that time, a 16-fold increase over the 2010 average of 79 megabytes per month. Aggregate smartphone traffic in 2015 will be 47 times greater than it is today, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 116 percent. The ability to scale policy and charging is vital, as major mobile operators must often support 100 million simultaneous sessions. Another important requirement for a policy and charging solution is that it work efficiently with network architectures that support multimedia applications using voice and video, which are particularly sensitive to network latency. Finally, mobile operators need intelligent and flexible policy control features that can be used to create various new mobile subscription plans based on different usage requirements and that can detect users accessing the mobile network from different geographical entry points using different types of devices. All of these evolving industry requirements prompted the 3GPP to define a policy control and charging standard for Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) call establishment. The Cisco PCC solution addresses all 3GPP PCC standards in a cost-effective solution that can be activated in the Cisco ASR 5000 multimedia core platform and provides high scalability, system reliability and redundancy, and low latency.

2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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Solution
Cisco has offered solutions that provide policy, enforcement, and charging capabilities for several years. To date, these solutions have encompassed a blend of Cisco and partner products (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Previous Cisco Policy and Charging Control Solution Architecture

Together, these solutions provide a variety of benefits, including:

Enforcement of subscription services per user, per service, and per service group Protection against abuse, including Subscriber Identity Mobile (SIM) card swap and unauthorized roaming Subscriber notifications, such as for access limits and roaming charges Service-based controls, including controls for promotions, differential service billing, and service-based quality of service (QoS)

On-demand changes to bandwidth and QoS Service changes based on time of day, date, or special promotions

In the newest Cisco PCC architecture with Cisco IPCF (Figure 2), two policy and charging control functions have been integrated into the Cisco solution. The Cisco Subscriber Service Controller (SSC) is now a feature on the Cisco Unified Computing System or IBM BladeCenter server platform and provides the Subscriber Policy Register (SPR) features. Optionally, Home Subscriber Service (HSS) and authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) features can also be moved to the Cisco or IBM server infrastructure. Also, within the new architecture, the PCRF is now an integrated feature on the Cisco ASR 5000 Series.

2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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Figure 2.

New Cisco Policy and Charging Control Solution Architecture

Specific components of the Cisco solution include the following.

Cisco Intelligent Policy Control Function (IPCF) contains the Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), which houses the individual policies defining network, application, and subscriber conditions that must be met to successfully deliver a service or maintain its QoS. The Cisco IPCF is fully compliant with 3GPP PCC Release 7 and Release 8 standards for LTE. It includes capabilities to support volume usage management in both centralized and distributed environments. An SPR node also provides subscriberspecific data to the PCRF to assist in evaluating policy decisions. The SPR may be a standalone database or integrated into an existing subscriber database such as a HSS, as required for user profile read and write operations to support desired use cases. It can run on a Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Server or an IBM BladeCenter server and includes information such as entitlements and rate plans.

Cisco Subscriber Service Controller (SSC) is a SPR function compliant with 3GPP PCC Release 8 that uses an extended implementation of the 3GPP Sh interface messaging to exchange both static and dynamic subscriber profile data with the IPCF. With the optional Decision Center functionality, the Cisco SSC provides enforcement of aggregate rules in support of volume usage across groups of subscribers sharing a common account. The Cisco SSC operates on a Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Server or an IBM BladeCenter server.

Cisco Policy Provisioning Tool (PPT) is a graphical user interface for facilitating the definition of policy rules and for managing their distribution to the deployed SSC and IPCF nodes.

2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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Additionally, a Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) supports flow gating, rate limiting, policing, shaping, Differentiated Services (DiffServ) marking, and other features. These are coupled with integrated deep packet inspection (DPI) capabilities, 3GPP QoS controls, and advanced Gx reporting capabilitiesincluding current support for volume over Gx. These capabilities run on the Cisco ASR 5000 Series, which supports mobile gateway services such as the Cisco Gateway General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Support Node (GGSN), Home Agent (HA), Cisco Serving Gateway (SGW), and Cisco Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (PGW). Together, they provide an unmatched PCEF platform for meeting the PCC requirements of subscribers. Both the Online Charging Subsystem (OCS) and Offline Charging Subsystem (OFCS) are provided through strategic partnerships. The OCS provides online or real-time credit control and quota management for subscriber data sessions. Quota management may include multiple data sessions where the balance manager component of the OCS keeps track of the subscriber's usage and remaining quota balance. Online credit control may be used to support policy enforcement for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers. The OFCS receives charging data in the form of Call Detail Records (CDRs) and Diameter accounting messages from network elements after the subscriber incurs network resource usage. The OFCS does not have an active, real-time role in the processing of charging policies. Cisco Mobility Unified Reporting System captures real-time service, tracing, and troubleshooting information and provides a comprehensive set of statistics, customized reports, and statistical trending on the Cisco ASR 5000 Series.

Competitive Benefits
The new Cisco PCC solution with Cisco IPCF provides these benefits over competitive solutions.

High scalability, the single most crucial feature required in policy and charging control solutions today. The Cisco ASR 5000 Series provides a distributed architecture that can deliver any service on any card anywhere within the system. The platform is optimized across the three main performance dimensionshigh data throughput, high connection setup times, and high concurrent sessions. Most competitive solutions optimize for one performance dimension at the expense of others. The Cisco PCC solution typically provides a unit cost performance improvement over competitive systems by a factor of 3 to 10. The IPCF scales to 4 million active PCRF sessions on a fully loaded chassis. The SSC scales to 40 million active sessions.

Reliability and redundancy to reduce downtime, lost revenue, and lost customers. The IPCF is integrated into the Cisco ASR 5000 Series platform and supports both intrachassis high availability and interchassis geographic redundancy and active session failover, consistent with Cisco ASR 5000 standard platform capabilities. Additionally, the SSC supports high-availability intrachassis and mated pair deployments, providing active session failover within and geographic redundancy across the SSC chassis, as needed to complement the IPCF.

Reduced latency is possible by collocating the PCRF within the GGSN, thereby reducing the network complexity as well as reducing call setup latency. The IPCF provides the unique capability to deploy distributed PCRF software. The software can reside standalone in a Cisco ASR 5000 or it can be collocated with the PCEF (such as a GGSN, HA or PGW in the Cisco ASR 5000). This flexibility allows mobile operators to use excess capacity within the system without requiring additional hardware to provide PCRF functionality. It significantly reduces the overall system latency, with some operators reporting the elimination 30 to 50 percent of latency compared to standalone policy and charging control systems.

2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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Why Cisco?
Cisco has extensive deployment experience with policy and charging control applications among mobile operators around the world. The Cisco PCC solution with Cisco IPCF provides unparalleled scalability, the single most crucial feature required in policy and charging control solutions today. It encompasses a comprehensive set of capabilities, ranging from intelligent PCEF-based traffic controls to collocated PCRF-based controls on the Cisco ASR 5000 Series and in fully standalone PCRF and SPR environments where such flexibility and capacity are required. Cisco PCC with Cisco IPCF provides mobile operators with a solution that has among the lowest total cost of ownership on the market and is among the highest in performance and scalability. Ciscos comprehensive, end-toend, intelligent mobile Internet architecture and solutions provide mobile operators with a range of features that allow them to enhance the existing customer experience, assure premium multimedia services, create new business-to-business and business-to-consumer service models with partners, and develop innovative new services.

Cisco Services

Ciscos end-to-end Mobile Internet solution allow SPs to monetize, optimize and provide high quality video experience through their mobile network

Cisco Services provide technical expertise across all phases of the network lifecycle such as design, test, implementation, and network operations including third party equipment

Cisco Services are proven to rapidly deliver Mobile Internet Solution, resulting in top quality voice, data, and video for a powerful customer experience and faster realization of increased revenue and market share

Cisco Services led deployment accelerates time-to-market and mitigates operational risks with SLAs Service Providers benefit from our cumulative experience across many Mobile Internet Solution deployments worldwide

For More Information

For information on Cisco Policy and Charging Control, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/move.

Printed in USA

C22-665287-00

05/11

2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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