Many market research reports have recently highlighted the growth in virtual broadband network gateways (vBNGs). The factors driving vBNG growth include greater scalability, increased flexibility, and lower costs than hardware-based BNGs.
Once a broadband service provider decides to purchase a vBNG, where should they buy it? You can choose from many vBNG vendors, including traditional router manufacturers, low-cost hardware router companies, and software vendors.
Buying vBNGs from a Traditional Router Manufacturer
The large router manufacturers have been around for a long time. Everyone knows them. And they have traditionally sold solutions that bundle BNG software with their proprietary hardware. However, the growth of virtual BNGs hasn’t escaped their view.
Traditional hardware manufacturers like Cisco and Juniper have released virtual BNGs. However, these vendors have built their expertise (and profits) on hardware-based routers. Their hardware-centric culture and focus will be slow to change.
In addition, the legacy router manufacturers work very closely with some of the world’s largest carriers in developing their BNG products. To meet the demanding requirements of the biggest carriers, traditional router vendors try to put everything into their fully-featured BNGs. While this may work well for large carriers with large budgets, small or regional providers may not have the budget (or the need) for these fully loaded BNGs.
An Alternative: Low-Cost Hardware Router Manufacturers
Low-cost router manufacturers provide a less expensive alternative. For example, many small broadband providers use MikroTik routers, which can be a good choice for very small networks. MikroTik sells affordable routers targeted at the small ISP market.
It may sound funny, but these lower-cost hardware routers also come at a price. And that price is a lack of scalability. Broadband providers tend to outgrow MikroTik routers since each router has limited scalability. Having to purchase new MikroTik routers continually is usually not an appealing solution, given the pain involved in managing an increasing number of routers.
For example, Softcom, a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) based in Galt, California, was experiencing a 30% increase in bandwidth usage and was concerned by the lack of scalability provided by their MikroTik routers. Softcom’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Brian Meredith said, “Our MikroTik equipment wasn’t scaling very well, and we were experiencing traffic drops, which was negatively impacting our customer experience.”
Software-Based Vendors
Software companies focus on increasing network scalability by separating network functions from proprietary hardware. By separating network functions from the physical infrastructure, purchasing additional hardware appliances every time you need more network capacity isn’t necessary. You can quickly add new capacity with a few software commands.
Disaggregating BNG software from the hardware also enables broadband providers to select the software and hardware that best meets their needs from various vendors. These software-based vBNG solutions typically run on x86-based servers, which provide greater scalability and lower costs than hardware router manufacturers’ proprietary solutions.
Delivering on the Promise of vBNGs
netElastic is a software company that developed one of the industry’s first software-based BNGs. Since its launch, netElastic vBNG has become an industry leader using software-defined networking (SDN) technology to deliver market-leading scalability and flexibility with an optimized data plane and highly scalable design.
netElastic vBNG also uses the ever-increasing power of x86-based servers to provide the elastic scalability broadband providers need. As a testament to its scalability, netElastic supports very small subscriber bases up to millions of subscribers.
For broadband providers concerned about vBNG performance, netElastic and Intel have worked together to maximize vBNG performance. netElastic vBNG was tested on Intel 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, and the test results showed vBNG achieved up to 1 Terabit of throughput on a 2RU server.
A vendor’s technical support can be a differentiator, such as for Squirrel Internet, a leading broadband service provider in the United Kingdom. Daniel B., Technical Director at Squirrel, said, “The support is excellent, and netElastic is really good at teaching us about the products and how to use them properly. We installed netElastic vBNG in our data center, where it still is today. It’s been up for over 740 days, so what more can we ask for?”
To learn more about vBNGs, please read the white paper on “Next Generation vBNGs: Is Your Broadband Network Ready?”
If you want to try netElastic vBNG or speak to a networking expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.