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Big Switch Unveils Multi-Terabit Network Visibility Platform for 4G/5G LTE Mobile Networks
[December 06, 2017]

Big Switch Unveils Multi-Terabit Network Visibility Platform for 4G/5G LTE Mobile Networks


SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Big Switch Networks®, The Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company, today announced GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) correlation, a new capability of its SDN-based Big Monitoring Fabric™ (Big Mon), designed to support tens of millions of mobile subscribers. Big Mon is a next-gen network packet broker (NPB) that leverages SDN principles, Open Networking switches, and a high-performance x86-based DPDK service node to provide feature-rich, scale-out data center monitoring, at significantly lower cost than traditional NPBs. Big Mon is deployed in leading mobile carriers world-wide, enabling pervasive visibility to mobile traffic.

"As mobile communications continue to increase, mobile service providers must be able to ensure both the quality of subscriber experience and network performance, which can be accomplished through GTP correlation," said Akira Kaneko, Net One Systems Co., Ltd. "Big Switch Networks offers an innovative solution for GTP correlation, which will alleviate scaling challenges experienced by other solutions, due to its use of the Big Mon Service Node."

Leveraging the Big Mon Service Node architecture, Big Switch delivers a scale-out, multi-terabit GTP correlation solution for mobile service providers to enhance quality of experience for tens of millions of mobile subscribers. The GTP-aware Big Mon solution provides visibility to existing 4G/LTE mobile networks, while ensuring a future-proof architecture for the ultra high data rates of emerging 5G networks. Legacy network packet brokers have a box-by-box approach that is limited to a few hundred Gbps performance, which is an order-of-magnitude lower than Big Mon.

As mobile communication exponentially increases, mobile service providers must ensure both the performance of their networks as well as the quality of their subscribers’ experience, resulting in the need to correlate GTP control and data traffic on a per-subscriber level. Big Mon’s scale-out GTP correlation architecture guarantees network & application management tools receive appropriate, per subscriber control/user plane data. Appropriate delivery of per subscriber data ensures tools have the information necessary to conduct performance, security, and billing analysis.

Traditionally, to achieve GTP correlation, mobile service providers have used specialized modules on NPBs, however legacy network packet brokers are not able to perform correlation and load balance across multiple tools at the scale required. Big Switch’s approach to highly scalable GTP correlation leverages one or more Big Mon Srvice Nodes inserted alongside Big Monitoring Fabric’s visibility nodes to meet increasing bandwidth and throughput requirements. Unlike other GTP correlation offerings, the Big Mon Service Node dedicates processing resources to GTP correlation which ensures that service providers have reliable GTP correlation performance that can be scaled-out as needed. Multiple Big Mon Service Nodes can be clustered to deliver multi-terabit performance, thus serving tens of millions of subscribers. 



“Mobile Service Providers must deliver a high quality user experience at scale and aggressive  price points in order to remain competitive, so ensuring available monitoring tools receive the right data from the network in order to determine service performance per subscriber is critical,” said Prashant Gandhi, Chief Product Officer, Big Switch Networks. “Big Mon introduces a highly innovative and much more efficient GTP processing design for mobile traffic correlation. By leveraging its SDN-based architecture and scale-out Service Node for advanced processing, Big Mon enables a highly elastic network visibility platform for Service Providers.” 

Big Monitoring Fabric with GTP correlation enables mobile Service Providers to:


  • View per subscriber session information for large numbers of simultaneous users
  • Ensure the correct tool receives appropriate subscriber data
  • Reduce the processing load on tools, so tool performance is optimized

GTP is used to transport mobile data within a mobile service provider’s core network and is composed of multiple protocols, including:

  • GTP-c (control plane): used for session initiation, termination and management,
  • GTP-u (user plane): used for user data transport.

Properly correlating the control and user plane traffic ensures that management tools are able to determine an accurate picture of subscriber experience.

Supporting Materials  
Data Sheet: Big Monitoring Fabric
Product Page: Big Monitoring Fabric
White Paper: Next-Generation Monitoring Fabrics for Mobile Networks

About Big Switch
Big Switch Networks is the Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company. We disrupt the status quo of networking by designing intelligent, automated, and flexible networks for our customers around the world.  We do so by leveraging the principles of software-defined networking (SDN), coupled with a choice of industry-standard hardware. Big Switch Networks has two solutions: Big Monitoring Fabric, a Next-Generation network packet broker, which enables pervasive security and monitoring of data center and cloud traffic for inline or out-of-band deployments and Big Cloud Fabric, the industry's first Next-Generation switching fabric that allows for choice of switching hardware for OpenStack, VMware, Container, and Big Data use cases. Big Switch Networks is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. For additional information, email [email protected], visit www.bigswitch.com or follow us on Twitter @bigswitch,  LinkedIn and YouTube.

Big Switch Networks, the Big Switch Logo, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Monitoring Fabric, BigSecure, Big Chain, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light VX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Media & Analyst Contact:
Kate Lehman
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(650) 322-6510

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