DPI vendors start tuning for mobile networks

The story looks likely to play out differently on the mobile side. Mobile customers are used to greater limits on their data usage, including explicit caps and service tiering (although all-you-can-eat plans have helped drive greater usage of late, particularly in the U.S.). In addition, competition is much greater on the mobile side — operators aren’t given exclusive franchises, and users can always find another operator if they don’t like the data usage terms they are getting, said Allot’s Cullen.

That said, exploding mobile data usage has many mobile operators scrambling for help to manage consumption. Allot claims it did DPI deals with five Tier 1 mobile operators in the past year alone. Policy vendor Camiant, which plays in many congestion management systems, also reports growing success among mobile operators.

In a nod to the current economy — as well as the seemingly insatiable demand for more and more bandwidth — Allot’s SG-Sigma architecture is modular, allowing mobile operators to buy and add additional throughput capacity as they go, whether they are adding additional subscribers or deploying new services. The vendor said the platform can scale to handle 30 million mobile broadband subscribers.

The box represents an upgrade of Allot’s previous platform, SG-Omega, which the vendor introduced two years ago. In approximately another two years, according to Allot’s product road map, it is planning to release Sigma-Gamma, which will bring additional processing and throughput. All three systems are card- and software-upgradeable, allowing operators to keep an Allot system “racked in the same spot but upgrade it and grow it over time,” Cullen said, by swapping out I/O and DPI processing ports over time.

The new SG-Sigma is available now and is ready for customer trials, Allot said.

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