F5 Networks has reportedly announced the release of F5 BIG-IP 10.1 for service providers to meet the growing demand for mobile services.

 

This release offers a new approach to mobile infrastructure scaling, said company officials. BIG-IP version 10.1 allows service providers and system integrators to benefit from layer 7 traffic management for their authentication, authorization, and accounting infrastructure, without replacing existing AAA servers.

 

With new version of BIG-IP, service providers can protect services from unplanned outages. It also lets carriers optimize traffic throughput on current AAA servers. In addition, the improved solution helps carriers maintain and scale existing services while preparing for increased traffic loads brought on by next-generation Long Term Evolution and 4G wireless network traffic.

 

For service providers and systems integrators, BIG-IP v10.1 offers support for diameter and RADIUS protocols. Company officials said that the new traffic profiles and monitors specifically for Diameter and RADIUS traffic, allowing service providers to take advantage of layer 7 traffic management—including load balancing, inspection, redirection, high availability, and simplified scaling—for their AAA infrastructure.

 

The F5 BIG-IP 10.1 features the on-demand capacity to handle the highest levels of traffic, company officials said. The company introduced PB 200 blades for its VIPRION chassis in order to help carriers manage massive volumes of revenue-generating traffic.

 

Company officials said that VIPRION and PB 200 blades provide the throughput needed today, and also a simple method for adding on-demand capacity to future-proof a carriers’ infrastructure. Additional features include carrier-class availability with fast failover; seamless strategy for staging network migration as IPv6 traffic grows; and total traffic control with iRules.

 

The new failover methods use a combination of metrics to determine when to switch to the standby unit, and reduce the failover time to fractions of a second. Combined with new monitors and carrier-grade hardware, the new Fast Failover can “significantly” reduce downtime, said company officials.

 

Company officials said that the BIG-IP IPv6 Gateway (News - Alert) feature ensures a carriers’ ability to leverage the scalability of IPv6 for all their mobile devices, while still connecting to legacy IPv4 networks.

 

Additionally, the iRules, an event-driven programming language, allows system integrators to integrate BIG-IP into their total solution, providing customized traffic management, such as policy-based traffic steering.

 

“BIG-IP v10.1 extends F5’s ability to help service providers scale their IP infrastructures to handle the massive throughput demands of wireless customers and support policy-based traffic steering,” said Jason Needham, senior director of product management at F5. 

BIG-IP version 10.1 is expected to be available in December.