The growth rate amongst mobile users continues to outpace traditional access methods. According to IDC Research “Users will access the Internet through more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide in 2008, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2012, the number of devices accessing the Internet will double to more than 3 billion, half of which will be mobile devices.”

The increase in mobile users and devices accessing the Internet through service-provider offerings creates unique challenges for service-providers primarily due to the peculiarities of the protocols used – particularly for AAA services - and a lower tolerance for latency among mobile device users. Even the scalability challenges faced by the most highly trafficked web sites pale in comparison to those faced by service providers. The methods of scaling web applications horizontally and vertically is well-understood and there exist many solutions today to address them. But in the service provider market the challenges created by its use of message-oriented protocols like DIAMETER, RADIUS, and SIP create unique challenges not only for the providers, but for solution providers.

The nature of message-oriented protocols like RADIUS and DIAMETER is such that traditional load balancing solutions cannot provide the flexibility and performance required by service-provider architectures. A new kind of load balancing mechanism is required; one that operates on a message-oriented rather than connection-oriented basis to provide the economy of scale that makes architecting these highly demanding environments not only possible but efficient.

Recognizing the unique challenges posed by message-oriented protocols, F5 has implemented a core message-based load balancing (MBLB) system that enables BIG-IP to support the service provider-class scalability and reliability requirements for AAA protocols like RADIUS and DIAMETER with relative alacrity.

The primary challenges associated with scaling message-oriented protocols is that they are asynchronous and use a single long-lived connection over which are tunneled many different functions. Each of those functions may require the capabilities of different servers. Traditional protocols like HTTP and SMTP are strictly synchronous request-reply protocols and operate on a connection-oriented basis, making it difficult to support the need for different types of services based on individual messages. 

By implementing core support for these kinds of protocols, F5 BIG-IP supports scalability requirements while maintaining the ability to customize and tailor deployments according to the unique needs of each service-provider’s architecture. This enables providers to build out a scalable architecture capable of supporting the rapid growth of its mobile user base. Introduced in the latest release of BIG-IP is native support for DIAMETER and RADIUS. New traffic profiles and monitors in BIG-IP v10.1 specifically for Diameter and RADIUS traffic allow service providers to take advantage of the benefits of layer 7 traffic management-including load balancing, inspection, redirection, high availability, and simplified scaling-for their AAA infrastructure.

To address the extreme scalability requirements of today’s service provider environments, and to handle anticipated growth, F5 has introduced in BIG-IP v10.1 a Fast Failover method, which reduces the failover time to fractions of a second. Also introduced are the F5 PB 200 blades for the VIPRION chassis, providing high throughput and on-demand capacity that helps future-proof a carriers’ infrastructure.

New and improved features in BIG-IP v10.1 specifically addressing the unique challenges of service-provider environments include:

• Support for Diameter and RADIUS protocols - New traffic profiles and monitors specifically for Diameter and RADIUS traffic allow service providers to take advantage of the benefits of layer 7 traffic management-including load balancing, inspection, redirection, high availability, and simplified scaling-for their AAA infrastructure.
• On-demand capacity to handle highest levels of traffic - To help carriers manage massive volumes of revenue-generating traffic, F5 is introducing PB 200 blades for its VIPRION^® chassis. VIPRION and PB 200 blades provide the throughput needed today as well as a simple method for adding on-demand capacity to future-proof a carriers' infrastructure.
• Carrier-class availability with Fast Failover - New failover methods use a combination of metrics to determine when to switch to the standby unit, and reduce the failover time to fractions of a second. Fast Failover, combined with new monitors and carrier-grade hardware, can significantly reduce downtime.
• Seamless strategy for staging network migration as IPv6 traffic grows - The BIG-IP^® IPv6 Gateway^™ feature ensures a carriers' ability to leverage the scalability of IPv6 for all their mobile devices, while still connecting to legacy IPv4 networks.
• Total traffic control with iRules - F5's powerful event-driven programming language, iRules^™, allows system integrators to integrate BIG-IP into their total solution, providing advanced, customized traffic management, such as policy-based traffic steering.

These features and new solutions enable service providers to scale message-based protocols transparently with almost check-box simplicity and adds to F5’s growing portfolio of service-provider focused features and options.

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