ATCA DPI Framework

To deliver optimal performance and efficiency, network equipment providers are making increased use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology to identify applications and network usage. DPI can deliver real-time information about the network, thereby enabling a variety of new applications including policy enforcement, Internet offload gateways, video optimization, edge caching, RAN network monitoring and security amongst others.

As DPI transitions from specialized to mainstream “must have” solutions, equipment manufacturers are looking for additional support to develop and deliver these advanced capabilities – and often these technologies are beyond their traditional core expertise.

Fortunately, the DPI software framework brings together a range of best-in-class components as part of a robust framework to deliver DPI capabilities for these new generations of applications. For many applications, the DPI software framework will provide a stateful session-based load balancer with capability to filter, forward and manipulate bearer plane traffic at line rates up to 80Gbps per blade...equating to capacities of 200Gbps+ per system.

Stateful load balancers, filtering and forwarding of traffic are a fundamental part of building discrete packets into coherent flows (sessions) which can then be analyzed to extract information such as application type, user ID and other specifics including metadata. Once analyzed, policies can be easily created and applied to all subsequent packets that are part of this session.

For example, traffic matching pre-defined criteria can be separated and re- directed for offloading or video compression. Alternatively, the DPI software framework instances can be cascaded to sort and filter traffic prior to applying policies or forwarding for further analysis and processing. Use cases include lawful intercept solutions and standalone PCEFs in the mobile network – or PCEFs as part of mobile core network gateways.