F5 Wins Best LTE Core Network Product at LTE World Summit

The theme at the recent LTE World Summit in Amsterdam was “Implementing Mobile Infrastructure for Next Generation Communication.” Conference topics focused on the massive growth of devices and skyrocketing data usage on LTE networks, as well as the technologies that operators will need to help them scale out their network to meet growth demands.

Essentially, operators need a solution in their LTE network that will:

• Help them optimize, monetize, and secure their network.
• Let them efficiently scale out and up to meet subscriber and data growth while reducing CapEx and OpEx.
• Enable them to innovate and deploy new services faster to market while delivering high QoE.
• Provide multi-layer security and protect their devices, network, and applications from security threats.

So when it came time to submit a nomination for show awards, we put forth our BIG-IP platform for consideration. And we were very gratified to come home with the win for Best LTE Core Network Product.

F5’s BIG-IP platform takes advantage of a programmable, high-performance services fabric, serving as a strategic component of the SGi core network to provide operators with the ability to drive new services and better compete with OTT providers. In addition, BIG-IP consolidates key network and security functionality, including intelligent L4–L7 traffic steering, highly scalable firewall capabilities, policy management, CGNAT, load balancing, and TCP optimization on a unified platform.

As an L4–L7 intelligent steering and policy enforcement solution, operators deploy BIG-IP to gain valuable insight into the types of applications and services their subscribers are using. The solution can also implement policies that alleviate network congestion during peak periods. (As an example, they can steer subscribers that are streaming video on a congested site to a video optimization platform.) Based on subscriber analytics, operators can deploy new policies and services tailored to subscriber usage patterns, opening up potential new revenue streams as well.

Operators see IoT (and its implications) as an opportunity and as a security threat, due to billions of devices connecting to their network. Operators have deployed the BIG-IP platform to protect their network from advanced, persistent threats like DDoS attacks and DNS-level attacks. Unlike competitors’ offerings, the solution leverages deep application experience and fluency to detect and mitigate HTTP-based attacks and secures networks against threats and zero-day attacks.

Looking forward, virtualization of core functionality across the network will help operators reduce costs, giving them a dynamic, elastic network that enables operators to roll out new services faster to market. F5’s BIG-IP platform can also play a strategic role for NFV, with F5 products offered via high performance carrier-grade hardware, along with virtualized solutions supporting all major hypervisors. This ensures that operators have a scalable roadmap to optimize, monetize, and secure their network on purpose-built or virtual platforms.

For more information on F5’s service provider solutions, please visit: f5.com/solutions/service-provider