Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, July 09, 2020

ISPs and cooperatives take their first steps in virtualization

Although viewed by some as a complex and high-cost process, only accessible to operators with a large mass of customers, solutions to virtualize network functions are beginning to be applied in the world of small and medium ISPs and ICT service cooperatives.

In the last 15 years, Interlink, which was born in Rosario as an ISP, has been dedicating itself to designing networks and providing software solutions for other Internet providers. The company, which has 20 employees between Argentina, Brazil and Paris, joined the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to keep abreast of the latest advances in network virtualization. "Today the ground is being matched between large and small suppliers", as Mariano Malisani, its president, told Convergencialatina.

Interlink developed the Strings software that can be integrated with other complementary solutions used today by carriers "but it also works for our smallest clients: that is the beauty of the software", said the CEO. Strings is a monitoring system so that the client's hardware is on the same network with low resources. A special high-cost server is no longer needed, "any PC can be part of the network and give access to devices around the world". These virtual devices are configured from the headend and are left running. If an HPC or CMTS is added, the system discovers them alone. Currently, 46 Interlink ISPs clients are migrating to Strings.

By 2010 the "fad" was to make IXPs and caches with accessible hardware. Now the business model led by content providers like Netflix, which are virtualizing at the server level, begins to change. AWS also contributed to that: "You can develop software on instances that run on its cloud."

On the other hand, they are promoting the Dockix application, a hub of ISPs with a strong focus on software that aims to give greater transparency to these systems. Virtualization would allow each isp to see how much traffic it carries and pay accordingly. The idea is to use SDN (Software-defined networking) and VNFs to lower costs and for ISPs to receive that savings. Dockix works with a charter to which its members must adhere, who commit to traffic audits to prove that there is no manipulation in the network. "We imagine valuations for each ISP according to what they do with the network, so that consumers have transparency and those who do things well can see an ROI on it," said Malisani. To carry it out they are planning to form a civil association. If they adopt that solution, it would generate IPSs with an intermediate or large traffic grade, saving up to 80%, said Malisani.

Morteros. In February, thecooperative of Morteros created the IT and Development Department and virtualized various functions of its network. The physical servers had to change: there were small and medium businesses that used a standard computer as a server and had support problems due to the fact of not having an internal IT structure. They evaluated different alternatives and decided on Nutanix virtualized servers provided by Communication Partner.

When the quarantine was decreed, in less than a week virtual offices were deployed for the 70 employees of the cooperative, technical manager Joaquín González told Convergencialatina. Users expanded the network allowing them to create private networks with points in homes. "As we own the network, we turn the mouths into LAN," González explained. The same service extends to neighboring towns such as Brinkmann, Tacural, Suardi and San Guillermo (the last three in Santa Fe).

On the other hand, they annexed the video streaming service for local radio stations and channels that only need to put a small camera and send the transmission thread to virtual servers in the cloud. Using HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) encoders and converters, a web-ready transmission is generated and eventually added to an OTT programming schedule. According to González, rather than virtualizing the set top box, the trend is to "change the way of broadcasting" with these solutions.

Other cooperatives.  The cooperatives that make up Catel were in talks to unify criteria and aim to virtualization. But according to Nicolás Vidal, Telviso's technology manager, in small operators “it is very difficult to see cost benefits” and it is also difficult to implement that the criteria and types of equipment be unified among all.

Instead, most of Catel's MVOs functions will be virtualized. The network functions will be virtualized in the core, the layer in charge of providing connectivity between different access points such as routers and switches. To the own core, a software acquired from the Spanish company JSC. Only the servers and some routers and switches will be physically mounted to interconnect with Movistar network. Vidal commented that almost all the solutions for telephony of large providers, such as Huawei, come virtualized.

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