Status Quo Analysis of full-service router operation

At present, full-service routers are widely used, and their devices have a high market demand. Here we mainly introduce that BRAS and routers tend to have the same functions, this section describes the operation modes of full-service routers. The construction of the 3G network has prompted operators to speed up the construction of the IP Metropolitan Area Network. Operators are actively bidding for full-service router equipment. An internal person from a equipment manufacturer told reporters that during the recent bidding, the operator put forward higher requirements on the performance of the full-service router equipment, for example, new business scalability and support for mobile information.

The high performance requirements of devices directly promote the rapid popularization of full-service routers. Compared with the traditional SR and BRAS, full-service routers have significant technological improvements in terms of processing performance, service provision capability, high-quality QoS service capability, and security protection capability, it helps telecom operators build an IP bearer network that comprehensively carries voice, data, video, and mobile services in the 3G era.

Evolving in a higher direction

With the increasing number of broadband users and services of operators and the IP address of telecommunication networks, simple routers cannot meet the needs of operators for business control and management. Therefore, full-service routers and BRAS (Broadband Access Servers) emerged. When they are available, full-service routers are used to connect users and network edges to Achieve Packet forwarding with a small capacity. BRAS is the Access Gateway for broadband network applications, used to complete user authentication and management. At present, business routers and BRAS have been widely used at the backbone networks of telecom carriers and the edges of man. the two work together to assume the role of Multi-Service bearer. However, as the operator's demand for video and other services increases, the defects of full-service routers and BRAS have also begun to emerge. Because the PPPoE protocol Access Mode Supported by BRAS has internal limitations in terms of service support capabilities, it cannot carry high-quality services such as IPTV on a large scale. However, full-service routers do not support PPPoE, for carriers that are still using broadband access services as their main sources of income, the full-service router still cannot stand alone.

As a result, equipment vendors integrate the functions of BRAS and SR into a unified hardware platform in different directions to realize the carrying of large-capacity and high-bandwidth services and adapt to the trend of network convergence. Liu Yongchun, Chief Engineer of Shanghai Bell IP division, said: "The full-service router can support both PPPoE and IPoE access modes to implement all functions of BRAS and SR, the full-service router also supports mobile information." Redback, the leader of BRAS, gradually integrates the functions of the full-service router into BRAS. "A true multi-service edge router integrates service routing, aggregation, user management (BRAS), and other functions into a single edge device ." He Fei, vice president of Redback Asia Pacific sales operations, told reporters. "Today, business routers and BRAS have formed a similar situation. Their development direction is to unify the edge of the operator's network and simplify network layers and control. Who can replace? ." An internal operator said.

Who will replace who?

With the advent of the full-service era, each operator builds an IP bearer network that comprehensively carries voice, data, video, and mobile services as a prerequisite for full-service operation. Therefore, full-service routers developed from two different roads: Business routers and BRAS have become the market focus for many vendors. Liu Yongchun told reporters: "a full-service router can assume the dual roles of a fixed network gateway and a mobile network gateway. When the two networks are integrated, there is no need to make tedious adjustments to the network structure, consider future network evolution and save investment." Therefore, in his opinion, BRAS will gradually be marginalized and moved to the backbone network edge of four or five cities until it is finally replaced by a full-service router.

In addition, carriers are more inclined to use IPoE to carry out the most-carried high-bandwidth IPTV services. In the early stage of IPTV development, the user scale is relatively small, and operators often use BRAS access to transmit data through PPPoE protocol. With the gradual expansion of the user scale, PPPoE is no longer competent to carry large-scale services because it does not support broadcasting methods. carriers tend to access IPTV services through sr and use IPoE and DHCP protocols to carry services, this also speeds up the replacement of BRAS by full-service routers. However, in the opinion of some experts, the emergence of full-service routers is nothing more than a conceptual hype. For BRAS, or for business routers, it does not have a revolutionary significance to subvert technology.

Tang xiongyan, former Vice-President engineer of China Netcom Research Institute, and Xu Jianfeng, Vice-President engineer of China Telecom Guangdong Research Institute, said in an interview with the reporter of China Telecom Industry News (Internet, in an environment where ADSL occupies the mainstream broadband access mode, BRAS can complete the network bearer function, end users' PPPoE connections, and aggregate user traffic functions, at the same time, it can achieve certain user access authentication, billing, and management functions, and better meet the operator's current network operations. They believe that in the future, whether full-service routers will receive large-scale applications depends on the development of high-bandwidth services and user needs. "Becoming a mainstream business router is already a trend ." Xu Jianfeng said. Therefore, the question of who will replace who will be a long-term game. One H3C technician also said: "In the operator's network, BRAS devices have been widely used. In the short term, it is impossible for BRAS devices to fade out of the market and further develop. At present, the processing performance, port density, and security protection capabilities are the bottlenecks of BRAS devices. Large Capacity and Multi-Service BRAS should be the development trend ." Perhaps the convergence of BRAS and vrouters is a trend.

Refined operation requires a variety of technical cooperation

The rapid development of Internet services not only caused telecom operators to suffer from a sustained decline in the ARPU value in the voice field, but also led to a decline in the ARPU value for broadband services. To this end, Tang xiongyan told reporters: "In the face of the risk of becoming a" Pipeline ", operators have begun to put refined operations on the agenda ." The fully equal market competition environment brought about by full business operations also promotes operators to start refined operations.

Refined operation refers to the creation and implementation of user-centered business operation models for customer segmentation business marketing strategies. For telecom operators, the value of refined operation is to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. In his opinion, the best way to implement refined management is to manage broadband users one by one and provide each customer with a unique experience with a specific SLA (Service Level Agreement. In this way, service operators can maximize the revenue of individual users and minimize network costs. It is understood that the full service router provided by equipment vendors currently has a variety of QoS quality mechanisms, providing technical guarantee for refined operation. H3C experts told reporters that family users are evolving from a single data requirement to diversified voice, video, and data demands, A full-service router can provide a logically independent service queue and QoS scheduling policy for each user, so that one user can have one service, one queue, and one user can have one QoS scheduling policy, it combines user services with commitment rates to provide users with the best network services. For enterprise users, full-service routers can provide comprehensive VPN solutions, including L3MPLSVPN, VLL, VPLS, and GRE.

In Tang xiongyan's view, the operator needs to formulate detailed user policies and billing policies. "The operator sends detailed billing policies to the policy server based on the behavior of each user and sends instructions to the full-service router, the full-service router makes corresponding behavior adjustments according to instructions." He told reporters details about future refined operations. According to the reporter's understanding, in fact, the operator's current online routers can already record the user's detailed information. However, due to other technical problems such as billing, the refined operation is still in the planning stage.

However, more experts believe that the router functions need to be further improved to support refined operations by operators. "The real multi-service edge features also need to include the deep packet inspection DPI technology, currently, this technology still needs to be improved." He Fei said. In addition, the seamless integration of full-service routers and video processing technologies for targeted advertising and other businesses still needs to be improved. "A full-service router also needs to integrate video encoding and decoding technology to analyze the image frame format and other elements, so that users do not feel abrupt or delayed or blurred during advertisement push ." An IP Network Expert told reporters. Because it supports the integration of mobile and fixed networks and the bearer of high-bandwidth services, all-service routers have been applied by some local operators of China Mobile at the edge of the Metropolitan Area Network. The application in China Telecom and China Unicom networks remains to be further explored.