When voice over IP isn't enough: Narus provides content metering

Narus bulked up its Internet Business Infrastructure solution this week with content metering capabilities and new Web-commerce service modules for its billing mediation system. The company also introduced hardware-based analyzers that capture usage data from any LAN or WAN interface.

Narus developed four usage-based billing modules in its IBI version 2.0, designed to open new business models and enable service providers to leverage the profit potential in their networks and services.

"There has been a big missing piece between the physical infrastructure and the business infrastructure because they weren't connected to and informed by things that were actually going on in the network," said Rick Kagan, vice president of marketing for Narus.

The content metering module identifies high-value content - MP3 music files, movies and graphics, for example - and generates billing events based on them.

The second development is the messaging service module. This module converts e-mail, voice mail, faxes and unified messaging into collectible and measurable events.

iBasis, which provides carriers with advanced Internet services, is using Narus' platform to deliver unified messaging for voice-over-IP networks.

"Our first service was voice over IP, but, as margins kept dropping, the service we offer needed to have higher value, so we decide to launch the first of our value-added services in unified communication," said Phil Mutooni, product manager for iBasis. "Narus facilitates the billing of these services by essentially providing a mediation function."

The third module is for Web commerce. It captures individual client and server transactions down to specific URLs. A main feature of this module is the "pay-per-click" model, which allows online customers to make several transactions without repeatedly providing billing information or going through a checkout process.

Application infrastructure and service provider ebaseOne uses Narus' application service provider module to capture usage information relative to the consumption of application resources such as bandwidth, disk space, time and volume.

"It enables by-the-drink, periodic or one-time rental business models for applications, taking into account the quality of service being delivered," Kagan said.

iBasis is in the second stage of its Narus implementation and is beginning to add more sophistication into the usage information it is collecting.

"We have an alternative mechanism through the billing system to do the mediation for voice over IP, but we intend to collapse all the mediation onto the Narus platform," Mutooni said.

Narus added a family of analyzers to the IBI platform that perform what the company calls semantic traffic analysis.

Semantic traffic analysis enables service providers to passively monitor high-speed LAN or WAN segments and to reconstruct bits into the actual user session that takes place. "Instead of looking and managing [the data] as it has heretofore, based on packets and bits and bytes, it's about value and content and real information," Kagan said.

The 6100, 6200 and 6400 scale from a single, high-speed network interface to as many as six. The 6400 analyzer can use six full-duplex 100BaseT interfaces or two full-duplex OC-12 or gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

Narus also delivered on its February promise to offer a virtual analyzer that combines semantic traffic analysis with data from other network devices and sources. Among the systems that the analyzer supports are Cisco Systems' Unified Communications platform, Cisco Ethernet switches and Lucent Technologies' ATM and frame relay switches.

Narus' support of Cisco equipment played a role in its winning iBasis as a customer.

"Our close relationship with Cisco and their close collaboration with Cisco influenced [our decision], but far and above that, it was the business understanding of where they want to take their product and where iBasis wants to go as a company, in terms of supporting the many services that will require such a sophisticated means of mediation," Mutooni said.

The IBI system manager now will include a software development kit for third-party vendors and system integrators to enable them to customize data conversion and aggregation capabilities.

"This tool gives you the ability to generate a completely arbitrary set of rules that could be applied to one or more streams of usage events," Kagan said.