More than a branding exercise, new terminologies signal a significant shift from ‟best effort” and traditional DSLAMs, Ethernet switches and BRASs, in the sense that they capture a shift in required characteristics and capabilities for a new generation of service rollouts, including:
high-availability for non-stop service delivery (non-stop unicast and multicast routing, non-stop services, and so on)
multi-dimensional scale (such as the ability to scale performance, bandwidth, services, and subscribers concurrently)
Ethernet optimization (leading density, capacity, scaling, performance)
optimal system characteristics (optimal delay, jitter, and loss characteristics, and so on)
rich service capabilities with uncompromised performance
Nokia’s Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) advocates the optimal distribution of service intelligence over the BSAN, BSA and BSR, instead of concentrating on fully centralized or decentralized BRAS models which artificially define arbitrary policy enforcement points in the network. With the SR OS, the optimized enforcement of subscriber policies across nodes or over a single node (as dictated by evolving traffic patterns), allows a more flexible, optimized, and cost-effective deployment of services in a network, guaranteeing high quality and reliable delivery of all services to the user. Nokia’s TPSDA entities are described in Table: Nokia’s TPSDA.
| Entity | Description |
|---|---|
Subscriber Management |
Centralized and fully integrated with element and services management across the infrastructure end-to-end solution (through the Nokia 5750 SSC). |
Policy Enforcement |
Optimally distributed, based on actual traffic patterns. Maximized flexibility, minimized risk of architectural lock-in. Optimized cost structure. |
Support for ‟Any Mode of Operation” |
With TPSDA, network economics, subscriber density, network topologies and subscriber viewership patterns define the optimal policy enforcement point for each policy type (security, QoS, multicasting, anti-spoofing, filtering, and so on). The SR OS capabilities allow service providers to support any mode of operation, including any combination of access methods, home gateway type, and policy enforcement point (BSAN, BSA or BSR or a combination of the three). |
All of the SR OS and Nokia’s 5750 SSC’s subscriber policy enforcement and management capabilities described in this section build upon Nokia’s TPSDA extensive capabilities and provide key capabilities in the following areas:
operationalization of Triple Play Services (AAA, subscriber policy enforcement, and so on)
service assurance and control
non-stop video service delivery