Just Some Fun Facts...

Physicists Invent (Tiny) Working Tractor Beam, World Becomes Instantly More Awesome

Bessel Beams David Grier David Ruffner Lasers New York University NYU Physics star trek tractor beams

by Ian Chant | 6:55 pm, October 22nd, 2012

You guys, hold the phone. Drop whatever you’re doing right now. Is it dropped? Yes? Good. We have tractor beams now! Like where you zap a thing with a laser and pull it toward you with beam power? Yeah, those! We have those now. Even though they are super tiny and effective only on microscopic items like silica spheres suspended in water for right now, they are still working tractor beams, and now that we have the principle down, they are pretty much only going to get cooler from here. If you can’t get excited about that, I don’t even know what to say, as I have to assume you are already dead inside.

The new tractor beam design uses a special type of laser known as Bessel beams. Rather than a single beam, Bessel beams are transmitted as concentric circles that converge around the point they’re directed at. This gives the beams a unique quality. If you place a small object between the source of the beam and its destination, the concentric rings of the Bessel beam can reform around the object. That makes it possible for Bessel beams to pull or push objects — a quality of the beams that had been hypothetical until now.
After working with single Bessel beams to try and perfect a tractor beam and failing, New York University physicists David Ruffner and David Grier assembled a device that overlaps two Bessel beams. That overlap, combined with a slight distortion of the beams from a specialized lens, creates a strobing effect in the beams, producing enough energy to pull tiny grains of silica back toward the source of the beams.
The researchers’ work may not be right for tractor beams of the future, which will be used to assemble our space stations and hold extraterrestrial ships in place so we can board and raid them. Scaling up the current design would mean using a ton of energy, and probably destroying whatever objects you were attempting to manipulate with the beam. It opens the door to a really sweet new technology pulled right from the screens of science fiction, though, and most days, that’s good enough for us.

What is next beam me up Scotty?  I wonder how much signaling traffic that would cause?  Tonia

Diameter Market is Accelerating....

Bellow are some excerpts from an article written by Current Analysis, Inc. pertaining to the Signaling that is occurring due to the increasing traffic in Diameter.  Current Analysis presents an interesting discussion around the  Diameter Signaling Traffic Model created by Diametriq and Tekelec.  These have proven to be invaluable tools in the search for what is driving traffic and assisting in the decision making process of what to do to it all flowing smoothly.

Taking the Pulse of the DSC Market: From ‘Signaling Storm’ to ‘Good Signaling’ Snow, David October 22, 2012 Market Advisory Report

There is no doubt about the fact that the Diameter market is accelerating. All companies with DSC products report an increase in RFP activity.Restricted budgets, doubts over capacity, and timescale requirements for DSCs are holding carriers back, and ‘scare tactics’ in the market have made them wary.  Enter the Diameter Signaling Traffic Model.
This new approach is epitomized by the publication of Diameter signaling traffic models. Both Tekelec and Diametriq issued their initial versions in September, and although the models differ in several respects, the objective is the same: to justify the assertion that good Diameter signaling traffic will increase and to show how and why. Perhaps more importantly, interactive versions are accessible to service providers for experimentation, and it is reported that they are actively using these models as an initial step in determining their own DSC requirements.

Not Included in the Box
Both Tekelec and Diametriq wisely caution that their models are only intended as a first step, with key parameters typically being the number of devices, the speed of introduction of LTE and the migration to VoLTE. Later models are planned to address the next logical step:
LTE roaming and the trickier aspects of inter-working with 2G/3G.

Near Term Drivers
• An LTE Attachment Disorder Is Coming: With the rollout of LTE, just attaching to the network will initiate a sequence of Diameter signaling messages in the core.

Competitors promoting DSC products should consider following the example of Tekelec and Diametriq in publishing interactive Diameter signaling traffic models. Despite reservations concerning the sophistication of these models compared with internally used versions, such models can be a valuable source of lead generation and typical customer network parameters. Additionally, they can be used to show case
company expertise by highlighting parameters linked to product USPs.

To see the article in its entirety it can be purchased from:

Current Analysis, Inc.
21335 Signal Hill Plaza , Second Floor, Sterling, VA 20164
Te l: 877-787-8947
Fa x : +1 (703) 404-9300

http://www.currentanalysis.com

Possible Routes for Data Traffic

What is a typical teenager doing while on their way to school on the bus, riding in the car with their parents to the store, or just sitting with friends on the patio(certainly not swimming, playing, or talking) they are watching movies.  Whether it is just a short YouTube video or a full length flick, they are becoming the past time of many more of the youth around the world each and everyday.
According to Cisco's latest predictions Mobile video will be 71% of all mobile data traffic. Video consumption may not make up the majority of the time on mobile, but of course it takes a whole lot of data.  So once again one must take notice of the possible future congestion and what must be done as a preventative measure.

Let us here at Diametriq assist in the measurement of the flow by using the:

NEW!! LTE Diameter Traffic Calculator

New White Paper

Impact of the LTE Migration for MVNOs

    Dan Wonak

October 8, 2012

Wireless operators around the world are upgrading their networks to LTE. This means not just the addition of new network elements like the P-Gateway and the S-Gateway, but also a fundamental change to the underlying signaling from SS7 to Diameter. Mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) – who typically have their own billing system and policy controller framework – depend on the mobile network operators (MNO) to provide them the underlying wireless network infrastructure. They need to communicate with each other via standardized (or proprietary) interfaces and are significantly impacted by this migration to LTE.  A Diameter Protocol Converter can convert, not just between disparate diameter variants, but also to SOAP/SS7 and other proprietary interfaces and assist MVNOs manage the migration to LTE.

http://www.diametriq.com/impact-of-the-lte-migration-for-mvnos/

Webinar: MVNO Strategies for 4G/LTE Migration

Driving the MVNO business is a full-time activity.

Last of your challenges should be worrying about protocol interface to your MNO partner’s infrastructure.

As MNOs migrate from 3G to 4G LTE, their core network infrastructure evolves into a new avatar: the Control Plane is now built around Diameter, the signaling protocol that governs policy, charging and subscription management. While your MVNO network traditionally speaks SS7 protocols (CAMEL/SOAP/RADIUS/WIN/GSM MAP or other variants), your partners’ Network Elements have now moved to Diameter and its supported interfaces (S6a, S6d, S13, S13′, Gy, Ro and others).

The Result? Your 3G Billing servers are now required to support 3G and 4G Network Elements in the MNO network!

Solution! Plug in DIAMETRIQ’s DRE – Diameter Routing Engine™ which performs all the necessary Inter-working between your current Billing interfaces and your MNO partners 3G / 4G elements!

Diametriq’s DRE provides interworking, load balancing and redundancy and is customizable on the fly! You may decide to bring in additional protocol support as required!

Now you may focus on driving. And leave MNO interfacing challenges to DIAMETRIQ!!

The arrival of 4G/LTE has opened up new opportunities for MVNO’s to offer distinguishing data plans and services. However, before that is possible, MVNO’s and MVNE’s have to get familiar with a completely new network architecture, a host of new network elements and a fundamentally new communication protocol called Diameter. Diameter impacts all interfaces like billing, prepaid, policy etc. In this seminar we will discuss strategies for MVNO’s to deal with challenges related to LTE signaling.

The following is the time and date of the Webinar just click and you will be taken to the link for the Webinar.  Enjoy...

Thursday, October 25, 2012 11:00 am to 12:00 pmEastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00)

How much of a concern is signal traffic

This article came from an interview with Thomas Henze, Deutsche Telekom it was conducted by Mark Callender, Conference Producer Broadband Traffic Management Series in a pre-event promotion.  Mr. Henze will be a speaker at the LTE Direct Event on November 8^th 2012, where he will be presenting a case study concerning Enabling proximity based services with “LTE Direct”.  He will also be discussing increasing the amount of connected devices and how it will affect signaling traffic.  Below is an excerpt of this interview.

How much of a concern is signal traffic caused by the increasing number of connected devices?

Different from some underestimations of the signaling as well as data usage traffic in the past, we have to actively manage possible consequences of the introduction of proximity services in the mobile networks. This means, for "LTE Direct" we will have to consider the impact of signaling traffic from the very beginning and design the technical solution accordingly. And lets not forget: Mobile access and the use of licensed spectrum are the most powerful tools - owned by operators - to manage huge numbers of connected devices in dense areas. First assessments and simulations have shown results proving this statement.

This increase of traffic due to the proximity of services that Steve is talking about in this article can be used to support the need for a tool to calculate the influence this will have on signaling traffic.  If it is known in advance what the level of traffic will be in a given instance, preparations can be made.  You cannot bring the baby home without a crib.  Diametriq's Diameter Traffic Calculator™ is just what the doctor ordered.  The tool can be used to calculate signaling traffic and stop congestion and bottle necks before they occur by assisting operators in understanding the weak points in their networks.  

Tonia Eynon

Free Diameter Protocol Stack

 
Click on above for the free download....

Diametriq’s Diameter

Diametriq offers a very high performance, scalable, reliable carrier-grade implementation of Diameter that can be used to build 3G and 4G core network elements. The Accelero Diameter has been used by tier one mobile equipment vendors and deployed in tier one operator networks.

Accelero Diameter includes support for the most popular Diameter interfaces used by EPC, IMS and MMD. Also included is an ABNF compiler and extensible XML-based data dictionary that allows changes to existing and new Diameter interfaces in just a few days.

Accelero Diameter also includes the Diameter Relay, Proxy and Redirect agents and a Diameter Routing Agent.  It can be supplied in a number of flexible licensing models, including source code, royalty-based and unlimited distribution binary.

LTE Signaling Traffic: What’s Really Going On?

The last in a series of three Diametriq whitepapers on LTE Diameter Signaling has just been published. In the first whitepaper, we investigated the sources of the explosion of Diameter signaling in 4G LTE and VoLTE networks. In the second whitepaper we developed the methodology for a traffic model that captures the key variables that dictate the degree of growth of Diameter traffic. An analysis of the number of devices, the number of events per device, the number of elements and interfaces involved per event visually demonstrates the explosion in the number of Diameter messages in LTE and VoLTE. The second whitepaper showed sample results and introduced the interactive Diameter Traffic Calculator™, which is available on the Diametriq web site at http://www.diametriq.com/lte-signaling-traffic-model/. This tool allows you to customize the key variables for a personalized traffic model. 

For this third whitepaper Diametriq invited Randall A. Snyder to review the traffic model and investigate scenarios that highlight potential bottlenecks. Randy is the President of Wireless Research Services, LLC and a highly regarded authority in wireless signaling. The author first reviews the methodology of the model and then uses reasonable LTE and VoLTE subscriber forecasts and incorporates the new network elements provided in the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture. The goal is to determine how much signaling traffic is generated, where that traffic goes, which events cause signaling traffic to be generated and draw some conclusions that might assist network developers and architects when launching new LTE networks. 

The white paper can be downloaded by clicking here: LTE Signaling Traffic: What’s Really Going On? 

A free evaluation version of Diametriq’s market leading Accelero™ Diameter can now be downloaded directly from the Diametriq website. This is not a subset, but the full version of the Diameter protocol stack with popular interfaces and a demo application that can be used for 30 days or longer. To access the download, please click on this link: Diametriq Accelero™ Diameter Free Download. 

For more information on Diametriq products or to arrange a meeting, simply reply to this email or contact me directly.

Dan Wonak

Director of Marketing

Diametriq - Smart Signaling

dwonak@diametriq.com

+1 321 473 4271 x603

http://www.diametriq.com/lte-signaling-traffic-whats-really-going-on/

Mobile devices: They will outnumber us in just eight more years....

In an article written on September 26,2012 it is said that Connected devices are to outnumber humans in just eight more years by a factor of 6.  If this is truly predictive of the not so distant future the signaling traffic is set to grow exponentially as well.  " By 2020, connected devices will outnumber connected people by six to one, and mobile broadband will be driving internet usage as fixed connections dwindle, according to a new report(Sophie Curtis, TechWorld)."   Follow the link to read the rest of this riveting article and prepare yourselves for the traffic surge that will ensue.

http://ow.ly/ecgqd

New Whitepaper! LTE Signaling Traffic: What's Really Going On?

For this third whitepaper Diametriq invited Randall A. Snyder to review the traffic model and investigate scenarios that highlight potential bottlenecks. Randy is the President of Wireless Research Services, LLC and a highly regarded authority in wireless signaling. The author first reviews the methodology of the model and then uses reasonable LTE and VoLTE subscriber forecasts and incorporates the new network elements provided in the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture. The goal is to determine how much signaling traffic is generated, where that traffic goes, which events cause signaling traffic to be generated and draw some conclusions that might assist network developers and architects when launching new LTE networks. 

The white paper can be downloaded by clicking here: LTE Signaling Traffic: What’s Really Going On? 

Randall A. Snyder 

October 1, 2012

The Internet is teeming with discussions and assertions that the amount of Diameter signaling traffic generated by the 4G LTE wireless core network is significantly higher than analogous SS7 signaling traffic. But is this additional signaling traffic attributable to additional network elements involving the Diameter protocol or the impacts of changing user behavior afforded by the features of LTE? Using Diametriq’s Diameter Traffic Calculator™, which is based on the standard signaling message flows as promulgated by 3GPP, certain scenarios reveal network bottlenecks, the influences of user behavior on signaling traffic and places in the network where fine-tuning can mitigate excessive traffic.

App of the day

Dead set...

Remember when you had to actually go to an attorney's office, sit down for hours, and draft a will?  Those days are gone by far with all of the internet services out there for those do it yourselves types; but it has gone a step further now.   There is an "APP" for that!!

Dead Set, the latest app for Android, will walk you through the will creation process and with the touch of a button you will assign all of your worldly possessions to their future owners.  This may seem morbid and a little drastic for some and not for the faint of heart; however, in the aspect of time and money savings this app could prove beneficial to some.
Dead Set is set at number 8 on a list of September 2012's best new IOS, here is the link to the article in Fierce Wireless if you would like to see the other 7.
 http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/special-reports/dead-set-best-apps-september-2012

Try not to think about it,
Tonia