Alcatel-Lucent's carrier class 9900 Wireless Network Guardian, announced today, works in the core to monitor application performance on wireless networks.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 10, 2008]

Although the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian, announced today, is a box intended for the largest wireless networks, the problems it addresses occur in wireless networks of all sizes. Mike Schabel general manager of the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian at Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, says that although service providers have learned how to track application performance on wired networks, doing the same in a wireless environment is more complex.

"It's more than congestion," says Schabel. "Performance and delivery issues are caused by network degradation, by blackouts and brownouts. It's more than congestion."

Each application is affected by the specific structure of the network. "Compare a 1 MB download to 1 MB of e-mail. The download is one signaling event and takes roughly 30 seconds. The e-mail occurs over a period of two hours and involves 1,400 signaling events. They sky is not falling today, but chatty apps are a problem, and more are emerging. Service providers need greater visibility as to what's going on."

"I use my VPN every day, connected to a mobile bridge with an EV-DO air card. The heartbeat on a the VPN triggers a radio connection irrespective of whether I'm sending data. If I've got the VPN on 24 x 7 it's like a 24 hour phone call without any conversation."

All of this, of course, is about legitimate network use. There are also network attacks specific to wireless networks. A battery drain attack sends a small payload, perhaps 40 bytes, very frequently, perhaps every ten seconds. The attack wastes radio resources and drains the device's battery.

A signaling overload attack also sends small amounts of data, but it's attacking the Radio Network Controller (RNC), not the end user's device. If the attack successfully overwhelms the signaling capacity of the RNC, the result is a denial of service to wireless subscribers.

The solution
The ALU 9900 tracts the impact of individual subscribers and their applications on the performance of the network. Forensics allow administrators to track and analyze the root cause of any specific event.

The device is located at the core and uses network protocols such as Radius and MIP to obtain the performance data it needs. "We cannot do 10,000 probes into 10,000 APs," says Schabel. "Instead, we look at every packet from with the core and relate that in real time to the radio access network. I think it's pretty unique."

And they're not going to say how they do it, either. "We've patented new innovations here."

These innovations came out of Bell Labs. Schabel did the research in Bell Labs on which this product is based. It is all part of the strategy of the new CEO of Bell Labs. "When Jeong Kim joined as president of Bell Labs, he brought an entrepreneurial focus to the task," explains Schabel. "The goal is to take technology from Bell Labs and align it with key market needs. I remain at Alcatel-Lucent and Bell Labs but I'm in a division with a startup look and feel."

He doesn't own any equity in the ALU 9900, but its performance will affect his bonus and his career. When I ask if he invested in the product, Schabel replies, amused, "Alcatel-Lucent doesn't want my money at this point."

The ALU 9900 has been in trial with major operators (I'm guessing some trials were with Bell companies).

The box is designed to handle 5 million subscribers per box, and to handle 2 million packets per second. For ISP-Planet readers, this is a bigger box than you'll need. Of greater interest is the fact that this sort of system can be built, and is being built now for delivery to the world's largest wireless networks.

Pricing and availability
Pricing is not published. The ALU 9900 is available now.

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