Technology
Overview
Since the launching of the ARPANET in 1969, The Internet has undergone amazing growth to where it now serves as an indispensible element in the daily lives of millions of people every day. During its nearly 4-decade life, The Internet has progressed from a nationwide set of packet switches and low-speed circuits to a global information-rich resource delivering a diverse array of rich media information in the form of video, voice, interactive data, and non-interactive data over both wired and wireless connections. And even though the nature of Internet traffic has evolved tremendously from the days of cryptic emails and low-speed file transfers, the basic method by which packets move across the network has remained unchanged during that entire time. The time has come to inject new levels of efficiency and performance into the network before the traffic overruns the infrastructure.
Anagran's optimized flow-based approach to IP traffic management represents the first significant quality improvement and cost reduction in IP since its inception almost 40 years ago. A flow is a single meaningful end-to-end activity over the network, and is defined by the IPv4 header 5-tuple of source and destination port, source and destination address, and protocol. Examples of flows would be a video download, a voice call, or an image transfer. The FR-1000 bases all of its traffic classification, packet forwarding, and traffic control on flows. This is a stark departure from traditional packet-based approaches that base all traffic management and forwarding functions on individual packets only, since they have no ongoing knowledge of the flows.
The Anagran FR-1000 seamlessly interoperates with any other existing traditional IP nodes in the network, but has a number of significant technological advantages that serve to complement and empower packet networks. With its Fast Flow Technology™ (FFT), the FR-1000 maintains flow state information about all packets in each individual flow, and manages traffic, congestion, and packet forwarding based on the real-time state of every flow. Among other things, the FR-1000 keeps real-time track of duration, rate, and byte count per flow, enabling fine-tuned control of the rate and treatment of every flow. Click here for more information on FFT
The FR-1000 uses Intelligent Flow Discard™ (IFD) to proactively meter incoming flows during periods of congestion to maintain extremely high bandwidth utilization without adding latency. IFD mitigates the adverse affects of "the QoS problem" that plagues traditional packet networks. With no understanding of flows and with only egress output buffers to randomly "catch and discard" packets during congestion periods, networks commonly require over-provisioning of transmission bandwidth and router ports as a crude and expensive means of avoiding severe service degradation or interruption due to network congestion. IFD therefore improves user Quality of Experience (QoE) and saves transmission capacity costs as well. Click here for more information on IFD
For classifying and managing the growing mix of video and other quad-play traffic, the FR-1000 uses its real-time knowledge of flows to invoke Behavioral Traffic Control™ (BTC). For the first time, the functions of real-time traffic classification, control, and Layer 3 packet forwarding are dynamically combined at broadband wire speeds to give network managers true control over all traffic under all network conditions. By watching all flows as they progress over time, BTC allows integrated classification, grooming, and optimal forwarding of traffic that could otherwise be mistreated relative to other traffic flowing through the network. Click here for more information on BTC
The Anagran FR-1000 can further enhance end-to-end traffic management by class by introducing new IP in-band rate management signaling from the TIA and ITU-T committees. This optional, advanced in-band signaling supports guaranteed rate, Call Acceptance Control (CAC) and preference. It includes TCP rate feedback which greatly improves Web access speed, making web page retrieval at least ten times faster than what it is today. Click here for more information on Enhanced Flow Rate Signaling