Introduction to the Service Control MPLS/VPN Solution

Table Of Contents

Introduction to the Service Control MPLS/VPN Solution

Cisco Service Control MPLS/VPN: the Challenge and the Solution

Overview

The Challenge

The Cisco MPLS-VPN Service Control Solution

Benefits for Service Providers

Introduction to the Service Control MPLS/VPN Solution

This module explains how the Cisco Service Control MPLS/VPN solution was developed to solve the challenges faced by ISPs offering MPLS/VPN services.

• Cisco Service Control MPLS/VPN: the Challenge and the Solution

Cisco Service Control MPLS/VPN: the Challenge and the Solution

• Overview

• The Challenge

• The Cisco MPLS-VPN Service Control Solution

• Benefits for Service Providers

Overview

Cisco offers a Service Control solution that is applicable for service providers who are either currently offering MPLS-VPN services to their customers, or planning to introduce such a service in the near-future. This service targets providers offering enterprise-focused solutions as well as those who are involved in offering MPLS-VPN services to their SOHO customers. This state-of-the-art solution allows complete visibility into the applications and services in MPLS-VPN tunnels for subscriber-based usage monitoring and billing, and leveraged for capacity control and for differentiation of service levels as well.

This solution incorporates the ability to monitor and control all the traffic in an MPLS-VPN tunnel as belonging to a single subscriber entity, including traffic with private non-routable IP addresses. Its advanced functionality facilitates the implementation the Cisco Service Control solution in MPLS-VPN environments, and the suite of capabilities that the solution provides.

The Challenge

Service providers that offer MPLS-VPN services are challenged in their ability to leverage their investment in the MPLS-VPN infrastructure. This lack of control hampers their ability to both reduce total cost of ownership and increase per customer revenue, aggregate revenue, and profitability.

These service providers need to:

•Implement usage monitoring and trend analysis for the traffic of MPLS-VPN tunnels to improve existing business models and develop new ones.

•Launch new service packages and billing plans enabled by granular subscriber usage information per service and application for the traffic inside MPLS-VPN tunnels.

•Control the traffic inside MPLS-VPN tunnels by de-prioritizing some of the traffic that the MPLS-VPN customers consider less important, while prioritizing business-critical traffic and providing network-based services such as content-filtering, security phishing prevention, and other such services.

The Cisco MPLS-VPN Service Control Solution

In the Cisco MPLS-VPN Service Control solution, Cisco has managed to overcome the technical challenge of classifying flows with private non-routable IP addresses into the correct MPLS-VPN that these flows are part of. The challenge originates from the fact that the SCE platform may have been incorrectly classifying the packets of these flows. The Cisco MPLS-VPN solution implements a unique learning algorithm that can successfully and reliably correctly classify multiple flows in multiple MPLS-VPN tunnels, even if they have the same private IP address.

The Cisco MPLS-VPN Service Control solution:

•Closes the loop between the Service Control engine and the PE routers that manage the allocation of MPLS tags to MPLS-VPN tunnels.

•Overcomes the challenge of correct classification of flows with private non-routable source-IP addresses.

Benefits for Service Providers

With the Cisco Service Control MPLS-VPN solution, service providers can benefit from granular per subscriber and per application usage reports. This granularity allows for complete per subscriber and per application layer-7 visibility of the manner in which their MPLS-VPN subscribers are using the service provider's network. These reports can, for example, show:

•The HTTP hosts or RTSP streaming hosts that are most popular for each subscriber

•The bandwidth per service consumed by a MPLS-VPN subscriber over a predefined time period

•An extensive variety of usage reports available as part of the Cisco Service Control solution

These reports can be used by the service provider's network teams for capacity planning, and by the marketing teams for planning and rolling out new "tiers of service" packages.

As well as the data records that enable these reports, the solution generates data records that can be forwarded to mediation and billing systems and used for implementation of granular usage-based billing.

Service providers can also benefit from the Service Control MPLS-VPN solution by using the SCE platforms as network enforcement devices for a variety of per network-based services, such as:

•Mission-critical traffic prioritization - the SCE platform can be used for prioritizing the Oracle or Citrix traffic that flows between the branches of the MPLS-VPN customer.

•Implementing various types of managed services - the solution can be used to create services designed to increase employee productivity, such as the creation of a network-based content filtering service. The deployment, management, and ongoing administration of this suite of services can be easily controlled using a standard WEB interface.

This flexibility not only provides an extremely attractive return on investment, but protects your investment as your needs for network and application infrastructure evolves.

Using the Service Control infrastructure to create these next-generation services provides the path to enhanced customer revenue streams, differentiated service offerings, and a cost structure commensurate with the required business model.