We talk a lot on this blog about Internet traffic trends such as the growth of Real-Time Entertainment and Storage and Back-up Services. While these topics sure get a lot of interest from both subscribers and operators, they aren’t the only areas where Sandvine is building expertise and looking to share insights.

Network Security is a constant area of concern for network operators as they aim to secure their network infrastructure in order to ensure a high Quality of Experience (QoE) for their subscribers.

As a member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), Sandvine sent representation to the 24^th General Meeting last week in San Francisco.  MAAWG offers a great opportunity to network, listen and learn from some of the preeminent experts in the ISP, ESP, academic and vendor community.  M³AAWG has recently changed its name to reflect an expanded mandate.  From a primary focus on Messaging, MAAWG activities now also encompass Malware and Mobile threats.     

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Guest blog post by Hussein Maherali, Senior Product Manager, Sandvine

This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) show in Barcelona, Spain last week did not disappoint.   With over 60,000 attendees, considerable show buzz was generated, with a focus on Wi-Fi, small cell infrastructure strategy, pricing for roaming data, and Customer Experience Management (CEM).

CEM was touted as the most over-used phrase at this year’s show.  While many analysts and journalists used CEM as a means to spark discussion and debate, equally as many vendors and operators showed they were focused on delivering a differentiated customer experience.  Nokia’s CEO, Rajeev Suri was quoted as saying, “Our industry consistently over-promises and under-delivers” and with that, noted he was putting plans in place to reverse this trend.  With this in mind, there’s lots of opportunity for vendors to provide operators with solutions that help analyze and improve subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE).

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A significant trend in the Network Policy Control industry is that network intelligence devices are moving increasingly close to the subscriber access edge.  This trend is true both in fixed access networks, where elements such as our own Policy Traffic Switch are deployed alongside the aggregation devices (BRAS in DSL and CMTS in Cable), and in the mobile space, where devices are moving ever-closer to the base stations (NodeB or eNodeB).

Being at the edge has many benefits, including more efficient and accurate subscriber awareness, measurement, and management of network traffic.  Ultimately, these characteristics mean that Communications Service Providers (CSPs) gain more precise control over network traffic, which lets them manage congestion precisely, charge accurately, and deliver differentiated subscriber services.

Focusing on mobile networks specifically, we’ve invested in the technology to allow our network policy control solutions to be deployed in the packet core network, for instance between the SGSN and GGSN, which yields:

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In the U.S., Sunday’s big game was not only the most watched Super Bowl ever, it was also the most watched television program of all time.

With so many people tuned in to their TVs, we thought it would be fun to take a look at how their behavior may have impacted Internet traffic.  This year’s Super Bowl is particularly interesting to look at from our standpoint, since it was the first time that the game has been allowed to be streamed online (although the streaming was effectively limited to the U.S.).

With such a popular sporting event, and its newfound availability to be streamed, it should come as no surprise that there were noticeable changes in Internet traffic patterns.  When compared to previous Sundays, NBCSports.com streaming saw an exponential increase in traffic.  At 9pm, the Super Bowl stream accounted for 6.2% of downstream network traffic – territory usually reserved for the Internet’s biggest websites.

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