Brain4Net released the first version of B4N Carrier Grade NAT (CG-NAT) Virtualized Solution based on SDN/NFV concepts. The product designed to address the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and provides native integration within existent operators’ infrastructure.

Based on Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) information, the top-level exhaustion occurred on 31 January 2011. Three of five Regional Internet Registries (RIR) have exhausted allocation of all the blocks they have:

  • 15 April 2011 for the Asia-Pacific
  • 14 September 2012 for Europe
  • 10 June 2014 for Latin America and the Caribbean

The anticipated shortage has been the driving factor in creating and adopting several new technologies, including Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CG-NAT). The CG-NAT is a middlebox device embedded in the operator’s network, permitting the sharing of small pools of public addresses among many end sites. There are certain number of specialized hardware-based CG-NAT appliances exist on the market. However, these platforms have significant shortcomings and bottlenecks:

  • High price because of using expensive specialized hardware platforms;
  • Scalability issues, low flexibility and inefficient use of resources;
  • Vendor lock-in that causes (sometimes) using proprietary protocols and third party systems’ integration issues;

Having a hard-wired network with boxes dedicated to single functions is not the optimal way to achieve dynamic service offerings. Network design must be more agile and able to respond on-demand to the dynamic needs of the traffic and services running over it. Key enabling technologies for this include SDN and NFV. ETSI NFV Working Group addresses this points and defines the requirements and architecture for the virtualization of network functions.

B4N CG-NAT – Virtualized Network Function that uses commodity x86 servers as a hardware platform. Carrier-grade performance achieved by data plane acceleration with Intel DPDK libraries. The solution is fully compliant with ETSI NFV reference architecture.

“B4N CG-NAT cooperation with SDN enables the operator to create a distributed solution. That means handle traffic nearest to source and perform NAT/PAT functions at the nearest SDN-enabled switch to Customer. This approach provides network load distribution” – said Max Kaminsky, CTO at Brain4Net. “CG-NAT is the first Virtualized Network Function (VNF) within B4N NFV Platform. OPNFV Project provides us the world best practices in development of open source VNFs and their integration with OpenStack. That enables us to develop our products based on world standards and provide our customers with solutions that can be integrated with 3rd party virtualized functions.”

B4N CG-NAT delivers the following benefits:

  • Simple Scalability. Operator have an ability to quickly scale solution performance by adding standard x86 servers;
  • Elasticity.  CG-NAT provides resource consuming based on Pay-as-you-Grow model due to virtualization all of the solution components;
  • SDN Ready. CG-NAT compliant with SDN and NFV reference architectures and can be integrated with operators’ SDN network.

For more information, please visit: www.Brain4Net.com

Brain4Net, Inc.

Brain4Net is the innovative SDN/NFV solutions provider for large and medium Enterprises and Service Providers. B4N Platform provides comprehensive network Orchestration & Control solution for Multi-Vendor network infrastructure. Our approach helps organizations bring agility to the network, improve network service chaining and reduce both CAPEX and OPEX for network infrastructure deployment and operation.

Brain4Net provide Network Orchestration Platform, SDN Controller, set of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs), SWOS operation system for Openflow switches.