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Much has been written about the evolving wireless broadband capacity crunch and the mobile network technologies that help solve this problem. But very little has been written about all the other technologies that are equally important for improving quality of experience for users who are demanding more from their mobile devices. These supporting technologies are known as mobile acceleration technologies, and they aim to accelerate and optimize the Web, content and applications for mobile consumption.
For example, on Feb. 14, the entire season two of “House of Cards” was released on Netflix which allowed “binge viewers” to watch all of the episodes over the course of the weekend. Although Netflix doesn’t release viewership numbers, it was estimated that 5% to 15% of all Netflix subscribers watched the show – with over 1.3 million tweets about the program in the 10 days after its debut. That’s good news for the show, but presents a complex problem for operators streaming all of that content, including much of it to mobile devices.
During peak viewing periods, real-time entertainment traffic is by far the most dominant traffic category, accounting for almost 50% of the downstream bytes on the network. As observed in several industry reports, social networking applications also continue to be very well represented on the mobile network. The quality of the most popular services is highly visible to end users and every degradation is immediately noticed, especially when it comes to video, music, Web and app downloads.
Transparent caching at the edge of an operator’s network is a critical mobile acceleration technology. It works by bringing content closer to the mobile subscriber, enabling mobile operators to deliver video and data content more cost-effectively and with a higher QoE. Without it, subscribers watch their devices “buffer” video, will wait hours for get software updates (remember iOS 7?), or never receive their content because the connection timed out.
Benefits of operator caching in LTE networks
Transparent caching is a mechanism for temporary storage of over-the-top content, including, video, images, apps and additional large objects in order reduce response time, improve network efficiencies and enhance customer QoE. Some of the benefits include:
–Faster response time: Response time is used to describe the time it takes for a mobile broadband user to request information by clicking on their device until a Web page opens or they receive the first frame of a video clip. The request often needs to be served over the Internet by a server at a remote data center. This Internet latency is highly variable and depends on the proximity of the data center to the mobile network operator’s point of connection to the Internet.
The goal of transparent caching is to bring popular OTT content closer to the mobile user by intelligently duplicating it in the core as well as at the edge of the mobile network. As shown in Figure 1, this process practically eliminates the variable latency of the Internet and significantly reduces server response time by assuring that the content of the cache is pre-scrubbed and ready for delivery.
Figure 1: E2E QoE (reduced delay) improvements by using operator cache.
–Real broadband experience: Mobile network operators are making huge investments with LTE technologies to meet the growing data de¬mands of smartphone users and remain relevant in a highly competitive market. Mobile users expect the mobile network operators to deliver the true broadband experience promise. However, simply adding more bandwidth does not matter much. It is much more important to make sure that the round-trip time is a short as possible.
Figure 2: Impact of adding additional bandwidth and effective bandwidth with a drop in round-trip time. (Source: Google)
Figure 2 demonstrates that transparent caching brings popular OTT content to the edge of the mobile network and reduces the overall RTT between the mobile user and the content source.
Deploying transparent cache at the edge of LTE network improves the overall user QoE – in terms of both speed and latency – and provides true broadband experience to mobile users.
Deploying transparent caching systems for mobile
Transparent caching systems can be deployed anywhere within an all-IP network. In LTE networks, transparent caching is typically deployed at the packet data network gateway within the evolved packet core. Transparent caching systems offer multi-terabytes of data storage capacity and capture popular content that is accessed by a large number of users. The efficiency and simplicity of deploy¬ing an operator cache in the EPC is making them popular for broadband networks including LTE networks. They provide a mobile network operator with many of the benefits of caching. Centralized caching reduces the uncertainties of Internet latency and remote server response times. Because they have visibility of data seen by large number of subscribers, transparent caches enjoy high hit ratios, hence larger percentage of OTT content is served by the system.
In highly competitive markets, mobile network operators are investing billions of dollars to roll out LTE and LTE-Advanced networks to try and meet the growing demand for mobile data services. Mobile users are becoming more and more sensitive to network quality, and as shown in Figure 3, the “network quality of mobile service provider” is the number one decision parameter for selecting a mobile device.
Figure 3: Decision factors for selecting a smart phone or other mobile device. (Source: Ericsson)
Summary
Mobile operators are deploying variety of technologies to meet their customer expectations. Mobile acceleration technologies can accelerate and optimize the consumer experience when using their mobile devices. Transparent caching is highly efficient solution, and provides a tool for mobile network operators to improve customer experience in fast, simple and cost-effective manner.
