F5 > Case Studies > Global Mobile Service Providers Optimize Performance of IP Services with F5 Solution

Global Mobile Service Providers Optimize Performance of IP Services with F5 Solution

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Country

Worldwide

Product

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager
VIPRION chassis
iRules

Tech Stack

Load Balancing
IP Traffic Management
Scripting Language

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Traffic Monitoring

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The customer in this case study is a group of global mobile service providers. These service providers are facing a significant challenge due to the exponential growth in data, video, and voice over IP (VoIP) traffic being consumed by users with various devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops. As data rates increase with each successive generation of IP-based services, from 2G and 3G to 4G, this challenge is expected to worsen. The service providers are in a fiercely competitive market, which limits how much they can charge for these services. They are also facing the threat of major and costly upgrades throughout their infrastructures to maintain satisfactory performance levels for the growing number of users and applications. Furthermore, they want to offer a wide variety of plans to subscribers, ranging from basic to unlimited access, potentially with tiered performance levels.

The Challenge

Mobile service providers face an enormous challenge from the exponential growth in the data, video, and voice over IP (VoIP) traffic being consumed by users with smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops. As data rates increase with each successive generation of IP-based services —from 2G and 3G, and ultimately to 4G— this challenge will only worsen. Fierce competition limits how much service providers can charge for these services, and maintaining satisfactory performance levels for the growing number of users and applications threatens to force some major and costly upgrades throughout service providers’ infrastructures. Furthermore, service providers want to offer a wide variety of plans to subscribers that range from basic to unlimited access, potentially with tiered performance levels. Subscriber plans that charge based on actual usage require detailed accounting, and unlimited plans often lead to excessive utilization that can degrade overall performance and limit the scalability of the existing network infrastructure.

The Solution

The service providers evaluated several load balancing solutions from leading vendors and chose the F5 VIPRION chassis and BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) controllers. F5 provided the only solution that fully met the service providers’ needs, which included many more capabilities than basic load balancing. Acting as a strategic point of control for the Service Delivery Network, BIG-IP LTM provides a unified platform comprised of reusable services that can be applied optimally to different types of traffic within different parts of the service providers’ networks. The F5 solution also offers the unique ability to customize how the controllers manage IP traffic in real time by operating as a proxy between the users and the services. The F5 intelligent Service Delivery Network supports all of the capabilities the service providers need to optimize service management, including traffic steering, content delivery, and subscriber management and access.

Operational Impact

The service providers achieve the desired results by deploying BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager along with iRules scripts. Intelligent session inspection, connection traffic steering, and rate shaping are now under the service providers’ full control using granular policies on BIG-IP LTM that are easy to create, modify, and enforce on a per-subscriber and/or per-service basis.
The service providers also have the ability to manage IP traffic and services on a perdevice basis, depending on whether users have smartphones or systems with larger screens. This enables service providers to adapt to new conditions and accelerate the provisioning of new IP-based services to satisfy evolving market demands.
The service providers are able to install and configure the BIG-IP controllers without any disruption to or upgrade in its existing infrastructure, resulting in considerable cost savings.
No changes are necessary to either the service providers’ own internal resources or to any internal or external third-party resources being used to deliver the services. This means no new servers, no changes to any subscriber directories, and no complicated back-end development efforts. BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is all the service providers need to provide seamless and fully optimized end-to-end service delivery.
Service providers are now able to provide the quality of experience expected by their subscribers based on the massive scalability, high availability, and customizable operation of the BIG-IP controllers.

Quantitative Benefit