EfficientIP > Case Studies > Keeping Subscribers Satisfied During Broadband Architecture Migration

Keeping Subscribers Satisfied During Broadband Architecture Migration

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Belgium

Product

EfficientIP’s high-performance DHCP

Tech Stack

DHCP
IPv6
API

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Proximus NV is the largest quadplay operator in Belgium, offering Internet, TV, ICT, voice and mobile services. Proximus currently has 2,089,000 Fix internet lines, 1,642,000 Digital TV subscriptions and 4,111,000 Mobile Postpaid customers. Their advanced interconnected fixed and mobile networks deliver innovative communication and entertainment experiences for residential consumers and enable digital transformation for enterprises. Proximus is the first operator in Belgium to launch 5G and is a pioneer in ICT innovation with integrated solutions based on IoT, data analytics, cloud and security. In 2016 Proximus announced “Fiber for Belgium” to bring fiber to the center of cities and communes and cover the majority of the professional market customers. The group currently has 12,931 employees, and also operates in Luxembourg and Netherlands.

The Challenge

Proximus, the largest quadplay operator in Belgium, was facing a challenge in migrating its customers to a new broadband infrastructure with minimal impact on uptime. The company had upgraded its backbone to a capacity of multi-Terabit/s and decentralized its Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) functionalities. This resulted in a migration from 10 central BNG-nodes towards 700+ existing decentralized nodes. With the new design planning to deploy more than 700 devices for the BNG service, management of local pools was no longer possible. Proximus therefore needed to unify DHCP service via a central solution capable of providing high capacity and performances. The challenge was to create a solution to add new scopes and ranges to the centralized DHCP service, while at the same time enabling the adequate routing on the backbone to the newly created infrastructure.

The Solution

Proximus selected EfficientIP’s high-performance DHCP for its unique capability to simplify the network with a centralized architecture, while at the same time handling mass volumes of clients. Only one pair of geo-redundant management servers (active / hot-standby) was needed, with one pair of geo-redundant DHCP servers. A total of just four servers was therefore capable of handling the current number of customers, leaving a spare capacity of 40% for the management servers and more than 1 million customers on the DHCP servers. Fewer servers also meant less power consumption, reduced complexity and a lower price. Other factors which made selection of EfficientIP evident included support of IPv6 and simplified management of IP pools, which removed risks of configuration errors. Capability to automate processes was also a big advantage, made possible by how easy it was to use API calls in a structured manner.

Operational Impact