Stoke released a software upgrade that enables its mobile broadband gateway to immediately support initial 4G/LTE deployments, while enhancing the profit potential of their current 3G networks. Specifically, the new StokeOS software and SSX-3000 platform now address the requirements of high availability, reduced operational expense, high performance and end-to-end security in eNodeB aggregation.
The new features in StokeOS 4.5 support deployments of all-IP backhaul architectures and allow carriers to leverage lower-cost open IP transport networks at the earliest stages of 4G/LTE. Capabilities in this software version include intra-device resilience, redundancy within individual Stoke SSX-3000 devices to reduce cost, power, and overall footprint, and support both for femtocells and LTE eNodeB base stations.
Stoke said there are four main considerations for eNodeB Aggregation:
- Secure Communications: When open IP is used for wired or wireless backhaul, the signaling and subscriber traffic must be secured from the eNodeB to the operator core. The SSX-3000 is a high density, high throughput security gateway, providing line rate, low-latency, encrypted communications.
- Tunnel Management: Unlike user to network secure sessions, the interaction between eNodeB and the security aggregator is of “network to network” type, therefore traffic destined for user endpoints as well as to the eNodeB itself must be protected. The gateway must be able to distinguish between traffic to subscribers and traffic destined for the eNodeB in the same encrypted tunnel. StokeOS 4.5 also provides a range of tunnel initialization and recovery options to ensure non-stop operations.
- Deployment Flexibility: The gateway must be capable of supporting many types of home, pole-top and macro eNodeB units from a range of eNodeB suppliers to support expected operator LTE radio access network deployment models. It must also support different deployment architectures, providing operators with the freedom to select best-of-breed solutions for 4G, and 3G environments.
- Operational Efficiency: In lab and commercial trials, customers identified efficiencies in space and power usage, multiple functionality, high availability and high scalability as key operational metrics.
Stoke’s SSX-3000 delivers connection and traffic throughput densities from 8,000 to 240,000 connected subscribers, in throughput configurations from 4Gbps to 16Gbps, in a five-rack unit form factor.
http://www.stoke.com/Products/ssx-3000.asp