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SmartAIR1000 Solution from Vasona Networks Responds to Congestion, Optimizes Bandwidth Allocation

By Christopher Mohr TMCnet Contributing Writer

Vasona Networks announced today the release of SmartAIR1000, an application controller designed to recognize congestion on cell networks and respond with on-the-fly allocation of bandwidth based on the demand made by each application.

This will improve performance for customers and allow providers to use resources more efficiently.

The company, which has offices in Santa Clara, CA (News - Alert) and Tel Aviv, Israel, develops solutions to help mobile network operators meet the demands of modern mobile technology. Mobile devices are being used more, and the larger screen size of smartphones and tablets alone places significant demand on bandwidth.

Content is more sophisticated with an increase in video, file downloads and Web browsing.

Cisco's (News - Alert) Visual Networking Index white paper predicts that mobile traffic will continue to increase significantly in the next few years. Just as well, mobile data traffic will be 18 times greater in 2016 than it was in 2011. The amount of video that will go through IP networks globally in one month in 2016 would take more than six million years to watch.

Annual global traffic is expected to reach 1.3 zettabytes in 2016.

How large is a zettabyte? It would take roughly one billion hard drives, each with one terabyte of capacity, to store just one.

SmartAIR1000 seeks to correct inefficient bandwidth allocation. Mobile device apps have a tendency to grab as much bandwidth as they can get, regardless of whether or not they need all of it.

When multiple apps do this simultaneously, this leads to bottlenecks and performance suffers. Application controllers like SmartAIR1000 locate the bottlenecks and the types of apps and what they are doing. A person sending texts would not get as much bandwidth as a person streaming video.

Current platforms do not have the ability to make these distinctions and adjust resource allocation accordingly.

The benefits to mobile operators are significant. By efficiently using existing resources, there is less pressure to do costly upgrades. Improved efficiency leads to better network performance and less customer turnover. Carriers can open up more revenue-generating services with some of the bandwidth freed up.

SmartAIR1000 operates between a mobile core network and radio access networks (RAN), and supports 3G and 4G technology. A combination of high-speed packet processing, mobile network mapping and RateControl technologies allow SmartAIR1000 to analyze usage and reallocate bandwidth to prevent bottlenecks.

The capacity by which mobile use will increase the next few years is staggering. Technologies related to the delivery of mobile service, including antenna design and solutions such as those developed by Vasona Networks, are needed to meet this demand.

The biggest concern, with predictions of zettabytes of global traffic coming soon, is whether or not these solutions will be enough.

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