IPX, DEA

The BroadForward DSC (DRA, DEA, IWF) is the world’s leading product for IPX providers. Designed to provide IPX engineers and operations staff with the ability to independently resolve signaling issues and create advanced service scenarios quickly. Enables immediate integration across vendor- and access technologies without the need for scripting or vendor involvement. Offers an unrivaled set of features that go beyond traditional Diameter signaling solutions and which is 5G ready.

LTE interconnect and roaming
IPX (“IP eXchange”) providers provide interoperability of IP services and worldwide LTE roaming between service providers. Roaming between LTE networks requires an efficient international exchange mechanism with guaranteed quality-of-service between visited and home networks. Initially IPX providers had no choice but to implement traditional Diameter routers. IPX has evolved over the years and IPX providers today require signaling solutions that give them sufficient flexibility to be self sustained and features that allow them to differentiate services. Typical IPX requirements are the ability to resolve interoperability challenges independently, personalize services for operators, enterprises and OTT and offer value added services such as screening. Traditional routers were never designed to cope with this complexity.

IPX 2.0
The market is moving rapidly to network convergence driven to a large extent by 5G. The BroadForward DSC is a Next Generation Signaling Controller and multi-protocol interworking solution designed for unrivaled flexibility in a multi-technology world. The solution provides a unique combination of DRA, DEA and IWF in a single, integrated software solution, offering more features and flexibility than traditional Diameter routers. Next to Diameter signaling the BroadForward solution offers IPX providers a clear road ahead;

The BroadForward DSC empowers IPX providers to independently resolve signaling issues and enable advanced service scenarios, across vendor- and access technologies. It gives them the ability to support a next generation value chain comprising operators of all sizes and network types, enterprises and OTT providers. With the BroadForward DSC, IPX providers can go ‘IPX 2.0’, taking local service innovation across global network borders.

DRA / DEA
The BroadForward Next Generation DSC provides everything that is needed for Diameter (Edge) routing in IPX, and more:

  • Diameter Routing Agent and Edge Agent for all relevant Diameter applications, including S6a, S6d, S9, S13 and Gy
  • Intelligent routing, ability to route Diameter messages based on various Diameter parameters or combinations of parameters
  • Stateless and stateful load balancing/sharing + session binding
  • Admission / Access control
  • Attack and Fuzzing protection
  • Diameter message screening/filtering
  • Diameter firewall (GSMA FS.19 including Cat. 0, 1, 2 and 3 filtering mechanisms)
  • SS7 Firewall GSMA FS.11)
  • Congestion control, ingress and egress throttling, overload protection, SLA enforcement
  • AVP level mediation and manipulation
  • Network topology hiding
  • Subscriber Lookup Function (SLF), routing based on external data sources (e.g. LDAP, HTTP, ENUM), e.g. for Steering of Roaming
  • Interworking with SS7/MAP, HTTP/2, RADIUS and various other IT protocols (XML, SOAP, REST, LDAP, ENUM etc.)
  • BroadForward offers the DSC either standalone or together (Single Engine) with the Signaling Transfer Point (STP);
  • 5G ready: The BroadForward DSC is extendable to the BroadForward Service Communication Proxy (SCP) and Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP).

Benefits
The BroadForward DSC is designed to address unique IPX requirements in a single software solution:

  • Extensive mediation capabilities: enabling fast set up of new connections with operators and other IPX providers, allowing to work with different Diameter products and brands;
  • GUI based connection management & service orchestration environment, no vendor dependency and no need for coding or scripting to set up new connections and solve Diameter interoperability issues;
  • Support for multiple network technologies, enabling launch of new IPX services: works across Diameter, RADIUS, SS7 and various IT protocols;
  • Out-of-the box support for Number Portability, 3G-4G roaming, 4G-5G Interworking, Wi-Fi hubbing, SLF for steering-of-roaming, MVNE services, PVNO, ‘Virtual-MME’ etc.;
  • Detailed traffic insight: unrestricted access to the payload of all messages, providing information that is vital to offer IPX/Diameter services, including intelligent routing, billing, traffic analysis, SLA statistics, KPI reporting etc., through fully configurable reporting capability;
  • Low CAPEX & OPEX: single integrated platform for DRA, DEA and IWF, running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or virtualized / hosted;
  • Network-wide capacity license: one global throughput capacity license that works across all locations and (virtual) machines (so no ‘per-box pricing’) and across all Diameter applications (S6a, S6d, S9, Gy etc.) and variants.
  • Supporting virtualization and cloud deployment as well as containerized application deployment.

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