BUILDING AN INTELLIGENT
NEXT GENERATION MOBILE NETWORK
ABSTRACT--Within today’s technology sector,
the mobile communications market has established
itself as a major growth engine. Subscriber
numbers and network usage are up; and forecasts
point to even greater expansion for a number of
years. At the same time, competition among
mobile operators is fierce and increasing or even
just sustaining average revenue per user (ARPU) is
difficult. Moreover, mobile operators are
challenged to retain existing subscribers, acquire
new ones, and manage costs for serving both.
Despite these challenges, the expanding market
represents an enormous opportunity for mobile
operators. Those seeking to gain an advantage can
do so especially if they deliver new services based
on how subscribers communicate — voice, data,
and multimedia. This will place the first movers in
a superior position to benefit from increased
market share, network usage, and profit potential.
INTODUCTION
In order to capitalize on this market
opportunity, mobile operators must be prepared to
support a diverse subscriber community. As the
subscriber population expands and new services
emerge, subscriber interests will inevitably grow
in a wide range of directions. Some subscribers
will require basic services; others will seek
individualized offerings targeted to their interests
and use patterns; and many subscribers will select
a range of voice, data, and multimedia services
that require the highest system capabilities.
Though their service choices might vary, there is
one certainty: subscribers will want to
communicate on their own terms, via voice, data,
multimedia, or some combination.
Mobile operators who recognize that they
must provide wide-ranging capabilities must
deploy intelligent, next-generation networks that
enable offerings geared to continuously changing
requirements. Doing so will quickly promote
adoption of new technologies, giving mobile
operators an edge over those who are not prepared
to rapidly adapt to market changes and subscriber
demand. However, any deployment of next-
generation mobile networks must be done cost
effectively, with the commitment to offer
differentiated services that reduce churn, promote
subscriber acquisition, and increase ARPU with
improved margins.
Yet most available solutions do not provide
the capacity, performance, service enhancement,
and intelligence necessary to support tomorrow’s
mobile subscribers. Offerings that rely on basic
circuit connections or simply move data from one
point to another provide limited value to mobile
operators and their subscribers. These limitations
effectively make the network one dimensional in
its ability to support subscriber connections,
offering data-only access to certain information or
voice-only access to other information. Nor do
these solutions provide the technology necessary
to enhance connections with in-line services or
sustain “always-on” connectivity — capabilities
that are rapidly becoming an increasingly vital
aspect of today’s mobile communications.
A more innovative solution unleashes the full
potential of the next-generation mobile network. It
provides significant service flexibility and
deployment options. It also provides a high-level
of interaction with subscribers, services, and
transport systems. The Interaction occurring
between all of these elements provides many key
benefits, including market intelligence, the ability
to shape the subscriber experience, and enhanced
service delivery. Such a solution also empowers
the subscriber and how they communicate, be it
voice, data, or multimedia.
This presents an overview of an intelligent
mobile gateway offered by Starent Networks, a
powerful, next-generation packet solution that has
been proven to deliver on mobile operators’
current requirements while positioning them to
effectively address future needs. This white paper
also examines the market conditions contributing
to the need for such a solution. Additionally, it
explains how Starent Networks offers the
enhanced capabilities mobile operators require as
they evolve to support an expanding subscriber
base and migration toward all-IP networks.
MARKET OVERVIEW
Today’s mobile marketplace is still in the
midst of significant global expansion with the
number of new subscribers using their mobile
device for more than just voice communication
growing rapidly.
Indeed, industry research forecasts strong
growth for a number of years. For example, the
use of mobile data applications is expected to
increase substantially, with the mobile data market
forecasted to grow to US$189billion by 2009
(according to Strategy Analytics).
Notwithstanding, challenges face every mobile
operator attempting to maintain growth and profit
levels. These challenges fit into three categories,
discussed in the following subsections:
TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION
The past few years have seen mobile operators
transition to next-generation mobile networks —
specifically from second-generation networks (2G
and 2.5G) to third-generation networks (3G). This
transition continues as operators deploy new,
packet-based networks and technology that will
increase voice communications options while also
delivering increasingly higher data speeds and rich
multimedia services. Separately, the rise of the IP
Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Multimedia
Domain (MMD) architectures promise to deliver a
wide range of enhanced multimedia services that
subscribers have become accustomed to using on
the Internet.
NETWORK TRANSITION
As a complement to the “Technology
Transition”, mobile networks are rapidly moving
from circuit-based communications to packet-
based. Circuit networks have effectively served a
market focused on voice communications.
However, with increased traffic, the introduction
of data and rich multimedia services, circuit
networks have become limited in their capabilities.
Mobile operators are resolving this by beginning
to augment and eventually transform the network
to be packet centric Packet networks create a
wealth of service possibilities in data, multimedia,
as well as voice areas, while lowering operating
costs. Though this transition will take years,
mobile operators are looking to deploy solutions
that can logically and seamlessly position them for
this migration.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
From a fiscal point-of-view, changes to the mobile
network are being made in an effort to increase
profitability. While network capabilities and usage
are increasing, competition to gain new
subscribers is heated. In many cases, this has
driven down margins and ARPU. As result, basic
voice services have become a commodity,
increasing subscriber churn and acquisition costs.
To reverse the trend, mobile operators must deploy
cost-efficient network solutions with enhanced
services and the ability to bill for them
intelligently. All traffic in the mobile network is
not the same, and shouldn’t be billed the same.
STARENT NETWORKS’ VISION
Mobile operators who want to create a thriving
setoff services within the next-generation mobile
access environment must provide voice-enabled
solutions to their subscribers — essentially voice
and audio access to the “data” world. Why?
Simply because subscribers want access to
information while they are on the move. The
mobile environment is one in which devices are
still used primarily for talking and listening.
Communications that once were predominantly
“hands free” are now more interactive. As
nextgeneration, packet-based networks are
deployed, the new services created must
accommodate this use pattern. The mobile
subscriber must be empowered to interact with
their applications via voice, data, and multimedia.
These user-friendly applications might include
voice instant messaging, video telephony, and
information services. New services must not
impose restrictions for subscribers. Tomorrow’s
mobile subscriber will not be satisfied with
applications that require cumbersome actions, such
as scrolling through long passages of text. Rather,
they will seek multimedia applications that afford
the convenience of immediate interaction, such as
replying to or receiving an instant message by
voice. Such capabilities are only possible if the
networks intelligent and designed around the
concept of enabling mobile subscribers to do what
they want to do, how they want to do it. This will
ultimately enable operators to satisfy mobile
subscribers by providing service offerings that fit
how they want to communicate.

Figure 1. The mobile market is undergoing
significant changes in multiple areas
NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKS
In order to address the technological and
financial challenges, mobile operators must deploy
an innovative, packet-based infrastructure that
enhances legacy networks by enabling cost
effective, differentiated emerging services and
applications. A packet-based solution will provide
greater mobility, always-on connectivity, and the
potential for new and unique services customized
to the specific needs and use patterns of each
subscriber. This will broaden the subscribers’
capabilities and enhance their experience; the
next-generation network also has the opportunity
to heighten interaction with the subscribers,
services, and traffic transport itself. Through this
interaction, the network will provide a view into
the subscriber and each transaction. This increased
understanding will expand the mobile operators’
capabilities and ultimately profitability.
DEPLOYMENT ISSUES: THE NEED
FOR INTELLIGENCE
Integration of 3G solutions isn’t the only step
mobile operators must take to support today’s and
tomorrow’s subscribers and services. They must
deploy systems that utilize leading technologies to
the fullest advantage. The new systems must
provide two key areas of system intelligence. The
first is interaction with subscribers, services, and
transport mechanisms. Second is service
flexibility, which is the ability to enable
subscribers to choose how they access the network
and their services.
INTERACTION
This level of interaction requires the advanced
ability to inspect packets from individual
transactions in great detail, which will provide the
mobile operator with a greater understanding of its
subscribers. With this vital capability, mobile
operators can determine subscriber usage patterns,
then make intelligent decisions regarding
deployment of customized services and service
billing. In order to capture this information, mobile
operators must deploy an intelligent mobile
gateway at the edge of the packet core that will
perform deep packet inspection to determine the
subscriber’s service level and align it with
applications, location, portal access, community
services, or other criteria. It can then examine the
network status and conditions. When the
intelligent mobile gateway understands all the
dynamics of the subscriber session, it can
intelligently shape the session using quality of
service (QoS), bandwidth allocation, and flow
control. This allows operators to actively shape
and manage traffic flows, improving the mobile
subscribers’ experience, and appropriately
charging the subscriber. Furthermore, deep packet
inspection functionality provides much more
flexibility for operations, such as subscriber
classification and billing. With this ability, mobile
operators can account and bill for services based
on criteria, such as time, location, per usage,
service level, destination, application, and other
parameters, while employing billing techniques
like pre-paid, reverse charge, push service billing,
and many others. Enhanced service steering
provides enormous freedom to customize service
offerings. Such offerings will capture subscriber
interest and provide an immense source of
subscriber satisfaction, especially if they offer the
highest levels of service flexibility. Mobile
operators who deploy these progressive, flexible
solutions will be capable of rapid response to
subscriber needs and, as a result, will reap huge
dividends in terms of new subscribers and reduced
churn network.
Switch

BANDWIDTH
PROCESSING POWER
Workstation
Figure 2. Intelligent edge infrastructure
requirements
SERVICE FLEXIBILITY
The next-generation network requires
intelligence to provide subscribers with more
flexibility in how they access their information,
while enhancing their transaction experience. The
next-generation network will enable subscribers to
access information via voice, data, multimedia, or
an integration of all three. With intelligence at the
edge of the network, value-added services can be
pushed to the edge, extending the capabilities of
the mobile device. Currently, the network’s
processing power and memory are centrally
located in application servers. These servers have
limited input/output bandwidth and thus are not
suitable for bandwidth-intensive services that
require processing of every packet. While switches
and routers have sufficient bandwidth, they lack
the processing power and memory to support
value-added services. An intelligent mobile
gateway positioned at the edge of the network not
only efficiently handles the traffic, it has the
processing power and memory required for a
resource intensive transaction, such as streaming
audio or video, that would ordinarily overburden a
mobile device (See Figure 2). In such transactions,
the information can be cached at the edge of the
network where it can be appropriately
processed, managed, and streamed to the
subscriber, reducing the impact on the mobile
device and network, thereby enhancing the
subscriber’s capabilities. Finally, the next-
generation networks must be capable of supporting
legacy and next-generation access technologies,
encompassing 2G,2.5G, and 3G mobile systems
through all-IP. They must be highly scalable to
accommodate increased usage, higher bandwidth,
and emerging technologies with new applications.
With intelligence at the edge, these requirements
can be met and service opportunities for all
network types can increase.
A COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION
Existing mobile edge platforms do not possess
the qualities and features necessary to build
intelligent, highly flexible next-generation mobile
networks. These platforms are based on
“retreaded” router, switch, or remote access
platforms, which were originally designed to
deliver traffic in a landline network. Though some
have been adapted for use with mobile networks,
these solutions are inherently incapable of
supporting the performance, capacities, in-line
services, and non-disruptive migration to 3G
networks required by mobile operators. By
contrast, Starent Networks has engineered the
ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway — the only true
carrier-class platform built specifically for delivery
of enhanced voice, high-speed data, and
multimedia services to mobile subscribers. The
Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway provides
the ability to support today’s mobile networks and
technologies, and much more, offering a high-
density, large capacity intelligent platform that
mobile operators will not outgrow as they
transition to 3G networks and beyond. The Starent
ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway, allows mobile
operators to:
 Create new revenue opportunities by
delivering integrated voice, data, and
multimedia services, such as voice instant
 messaging, chat, video telephony, and others.
 Benefit from tremendous service flexibility
and reduced operational complexity using
enhanced service steering capabilities.
 Gather detailed statistics for greater subscriber
understanding, enhanced charging, and
simplified provisioning through deep packet
inspection.
 Be positioned for a cost-effective migration to
3G packet core networks and beyond.
 Enable roaming, security, follow-me service,
and unified billing across mobile networking
and other radio access technologies, such as
unlicensed mobile access (UMA), Wife, and
Mobile Imax.
 Migrate their networks toward IMS and fixed
mobile convergence (FMC).
ROBUST ARCHITECTURE
One of the most significant features of the
Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway is its
high degree of system intelligence, which enables
extensive and detailed interaction with subscribers,
applications, and network transport elements. This
system intelligence is enabled by superior platform
capabilities that provide the transport and
processing mechanisms necessary for
sophisticated, next-generation mobile
communication. Its powerful performance and
capacity ensures that mobile operators’ current and
future network needs will be fulfilled, eliminating
expensive forklift upgrades as the number of new
services and subscribers grows. The Starent ST16
Intelligent Mobile Gateway is a NEBS certified,
carrier-class platform incorporating hot-swappable
components, a high capacity midline, in-line
service capabilities, and support for high-speed
management traffic. It provides significant
memory capabilities and processing power to
support the unique requirements of the mobile
environment. In addition, the platform includes
built-in hardwareengines that deliver encryption,
compression, classification, traffic scheduling,
forwarding, packet filtering, statistic gathering,
and manyother features. These capabilities have
placed Starent Networks and the ST16 Intelligent
Mobile Gateway in market leadership roles.
PEAK EFFICIENCY
The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile
Gateway’s high capacity improves traffic
efficiency by minimizing the number of handoffs
necessaryduring individual mobile communication
sessions, allowing it to support a much larger
portion of the radio network. This reduces
thenumber of necessary handoffs and call setups,
making for an improved mobile subscriber
experience.The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile
Gateway features a distributed architecture that
manages current mobile sessions in a very
efficientmanner. Within the chassis, call control
and packet forwarding streams are separated on
different control and data planes. This
divisionallows the different elements within a call
to be handled by the most appropriate resource, for
example, a high speed network processingunit
(NPU) for data and a control processing unit
(CPU) for computationally complex tasks, such as
call control traffic. This reduces thenumber of
traffic flow inefficiencies, ensuring faster call
setups and handoffs. As a result, the Starent ST16
Intelligent Mobile Gatewaycan handle a much
greater number of concurrent calls in a real world
application.
HIGH REDUNDANCY AND
AVAILABILITY
Starent Networks has taken great care to
ensure that its embedded and operations software
take full advantage of the redundant
hardwaredesigns built into the ST16 Intelligent
Mobile Gateway. Among the most notable is the
system’s distributed architecture, which
providesexceptional performance and service
protection by enabling signals to be rerouted
within the chassis in the event of a component
failure.Additional reliability features include:
HARDWARE
1. 1:1 and M:N redundancy for all
components with no single point of failure —
provides configuration flexibility; redundant
card configuration ensures that a single card
remains on hot standby, ready to take over in
the event of a failure.
2. Hot swappable functionality — allows
components and services to remain operational
during equipment exchanges(all components
including fan tray, power supply, and cards are
hot swappable).
SOFTWARE
1. Fault isolation — keeps a process failure
from affecting other activities. For example, it
could prevent a management fault from
affecting a session.
2. Self-healing — recognizes a process
failure and quickly re-establishes the process
contexts, allowing the system to rapidly
resume an activity.
3. Replication of software tasks and application
state across cards — minimizes the effect of
software failures on external users.
SERVICE CREATION AND CONTROL
The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway
can shape and manage bandwidth and applications
to a very fine degree. When managingbandwidth,
the system utilizes multilevel classification
techniques for management of subscribers and
services, subscriber service levelsare associated
with applications, locations, portals, and services.
The system then examines network status and
conditions, andintelligently shapes subscriber
sessions using QoS, bandwidth allocation, and
flow control. Services and information can be
monitoredand controlled dynamically on a per
session basis and according to subscriber
location.The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile
Gateway manages information flows at Layer 2
and 3 simultaneously to facilitate the service
creationand delivery process. This allows the
system to associate Layer 3 information with
specific subscribers that are identified during link
layerauthentication. In addition, the ST16
Intelligent Mobile Gateway has the intelligence to
manage information up to Layer 7, allowing
forunique service delivery per subscriber based on
application, destination, or subscriber access.
Traditional gateway routers neither associateIP
flows with their link layer sources nor do they
have the ability to store and share the information
for truly intelligent processing. This interaction
and understanding assists in the service creation
process by:
1. Offering unique service delivery based on
subscriber, such as enhanced charging, service
steering, flow control, robust header
2. compression (ROHC), session persistence, etc.
3. Providing a greater degree of information,
granularity, and flexibility for billing and data
repository applications.
4. Sharing information with external
application servers that perform value-added
processing.
5. Exploiting subscriber-specific attributes to
launch unique applications on a per-subscriber
basis.
6. Extending mobility management information
to non-mobility aware applications.
In-line Services
The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile Gateway is
uniquely positioned to manage the transformation
of mobile communications, includinga variety of
new capabilities and services, which have
increased subscriber expectations. The system was
designed to integrate networkand service
enhancing capabilities. These “In-line Services”
allow mobile operators to offer new services while
also ensuring efficient trafficflow end-to-end with
a simplified network topology.
Figure 3. A comparison of Out of Line Services to the more efficient In-line Services model
In-line Services are able to inspect and manipulate
packet traffic to providemobile subscribers with an
improved service experience. Examples ofIn-line
Services include header compression, application
layer compressionand protocol optimization,
firewall protection, content
filtering/parentalcontrols, intrusion detection, and
others. Most often, these services areimplemented
“out of line,” usually at one end of the packet
stream or at anoffload point within the present
transport system. Out of line services forcea
session to make multiple hops through a redundant
array of equipment,which has a negative impact on
traffic latency and limits subscriber andnetwork
visibility. It also forces mobile operators to deploy
and maintainextra hardware (i.e. servers, load
balancers, etc.) to account for each service.This
approach is very difficult to manage, and has high
capital and operationalexpenditure associated with
it. In-line Services take advantage of the
ST16Intelligent Mobile Gateway’s powerful
processing and abundant memoryto ensure
efficient traffic flow end-to-end and a more secure
and satisfyingsubscriber experience (See Figure
3).Additionally, In-line Services allow the mobile
operator more flexibilityand greater simplicity in
designing their networks because they havefewer
elements (servers, firewalls, routers, etc.) to
deploy and support.This inherently leads to
dramatically reduced network complexity,as well
as capital and operational expenditure.
SERVICE STEERING
Simply integrating services into the gateway
doesnot deliver the full benefit of an In-line
Service model.The mobile gateway also requires
the ability to “steer”the subscriber session through
multiple services.The ST16 Intelligent Mobile
Gateway is architected toprovide “service
steering”— the enabling technologythat allows
mobile operators to achieve better controland
visibility over the subscriber experience
andimplement enhanced charging capabilities.
Servicesteering also reduces the complexity and
cost of thecurrent architecture.Service steering
provides the ability to:
1. Understand the services for which each
subscriberhas signed up or are applicable to a
particulartransaction.
2. Understand the key characteristics of the
service,including:
a. The type of traffic relevant to the service,
e.g., HTTP traffic for web caching and e-
mailtraffic for spam filters.
b. The sequence in which the services in
theservice chain should be applied, so
thatservices, such as content charging and
persubscriberfirewalls may co-operate
correctly.
3. Create service polices both upstream from
thesubscriber device and downstream from the
Internet.Mobile operators can even apply service
steeringto external servers, giving them the
benefits of servicesteering while maintaining
existing services externallyas is appropriate to
their network strategy.
capable of unleashing the full potential of
nextgenerationinfrastructure. These new systems
must not only include thecapacities necessary to
support higher speeds, massive subscriber
growth,and emerging technologies and
applications, but they must provide agreat degree
of system “intelligence” through highly refined
interactionwith the subscribers, services, and
transport systems. It must be a systemthat exceeds
expectations and provides flexibility for integrated
data,voice, and multimedia services, allowing
subscribers to communicateon their own
terms.The Starent ST16 Intelligent Mobile
Gateway is the only mobile packetcore platform
developed for mobile operators that provides all
these capabilities, allowing for more cost-effective
and efficient deliveryof services. The Starent
Networks solution offers the capacity, high
availability, speed, flexibility, and cost-effective
migration path thatmobile operators require as
they phase-in next-generation networks. Most
importantly, it gives mobile operators a powerful
ally intheir quest to offer mobile services that
support the needs and desires of a growing
subscriber base — services that ensures
increasedprofitability and success in the mobile
market of today and tomorrow.

CONCLUSION
Today’s mobile networks are undergoing
significant changes, transitioningfrom circuit
switched to packet-based infrastructure, and from
2G to3G networks. With this transformation
comes a significant opportunityto deliver
profitable new services and enhance the mobile
subscriber’sexperience.Mobile operators who
strategically position themselves within thismarket
stand to capture new subscribers and grow new
revenues.However, before taking advantage of this
opportunity, mobile operatorsmust deploy systems