Efficient Testing of Cisco ASR 5000's Enhanced Charging Service Function with TeraVM
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
- Sensors - Liquid Detection Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- Telecommunications
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Traffic Monitoring
- Transportation Simulation
Services
- Hardware Design & Engineering Services
- Testing & Certification
The Customer
Cisco
About The Customer
Cisco is a multinational technology conglomerate that develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services and products. They are known for their innovative solutions in the field of Internet of Things, domain security, and energy management. The ASR 5000 Series is one of their products designed to address the high-performance requirements of the next generation of mobile Internet. It contains real-time integrated, session-state intelligence, enabling it to effectively manage IP-based flows on a per-session basis. The enhanced charging service function of the ASR 5000 Series is designed to identify and manage traffic on a per-session basis, helping develop tiered and detailed billing schemes based on mobile subscribers' usage.
The Challenge
Cisco's ASR 5000 Series is designed to address the high-performance requirements of the next generation of mobile Internet. It contains real-time integrated, session-state intelligence, enabling it to effectively manage IP-based flows on a per-session basis. A significant challenge that Cisco faced was how to efficiently test the stateful reliability of the ASR’s enhanced charging service function, which is part of the packet data network gateway (PGW), at a highly scaled level of network traffic load. The enhanced charging service (ECS) function is designed to identify and manage traffic on a per-session basis, helping develop tiered and detailed billing schemes based on mobile subscribers' usage. The challenge was to efficiently and reliably test the ECS function with an array of traffic types. The ECS is part of the LTE PGW, adding an additional complexity to the challenge of testing; requiring that the IP application flows be delivered in GTP encapsulated tunnels.
The Solution
Cisco chose TeraVM to benchmark the performance of the enhanced charging service function of the ASR 5000 Series. TeraVM was selected for its ability to emulate GTP encapsulated flows at scale, stateful application flows including HTTPS in GTP tunnel encapsulations, and its ability to statefully emulate multiple server-side applications. It also offered a highly scalable virtualized IP test solution that runs on Cisco UCS hardware. TeraVM was used to emulate the subscriber flows at scale, each UE having a unique IMSI identification. It was also used to emulate the MME enabling the EPC to manage the user plane traffic. The GTP encapsulated flows on the user plane contain fully stateful application traffic. TeraVM was also used to emulate multiple application servers such as web (HTTP & HTTPS), email, voice, and video. The emulated UE and application flows are fully stateful and can connect to emulated and/or third-party application servers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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