Nominum TELSTRA CASE STUDY

Telstra Mobiles Reduces Network Latency, Improves Reliability, and Simplifies Operations

Nominum Telstra

Case Study

1.1

Introduction
Telstra is Australias leading telecommunications and information services company, with one of the best known brands in the region. The company offers a range of telecommunications products and services from mobile phones and other devices, to fixed and wireless internet and Pay TV. They compete in all telecommunications markets throughout Australia, serving more than 9.0 million fixed lines and 10 million mobile users.

Customer Profile
Australias largest Internet Service Provider

Solution
Vantio Intelligent DNS System

Key Benefits
Distributed DNS servers yield roughly 60msec improvement in network latency Higher performance Higher reliability no outages and fewer DNS related problems Robust control plane paves the way for control-intensive 4G services

2.1
As a result of these issues Telstra undertook upgrades to the DNS in their CustNet and CoreNet to ensure ongoing market success of their mobile service offerings.

Challenges
Telstra has built its reputation and market position by combining innovative services with a strong commitment to service quality and delivering the best subscriber experience. Although their market position and service portfolio make them a visible brand name, Telstra is no different than other leading mobile providers, facing increasing competitive pressures from the ongoing evolution of the market. Like all market-leading businesses, this forces them to continuously assess and refine their network services and develop and execute innovative strategies. In mobile markets Telstra anticipated several challenges across their CustNet and CoreNet networks. 1. Take advantage of best practices for network design by positioning network services as close as possible to mobile users to reduce latency and improve resiliency. This had direct implications for their DNS infrastructure. 2. Make fixed and mobile services transparent to the end user content hosted by mobile had to be reachable on the fixed network and vice versa. They envisioned services like self care portals that would need to be reachable across Telstra access services. 3. Absolutely ensure the highest availability, 100% responsiveness in the event problems arose, and ironclad security. 4. In addition to operational concerns there were also a couple of technical issues to be addressed: Use DDNS and existing Nominum Dynamic Configuration Server (DCS a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server) to populate hostnames in the DNS directory. Implement wireless backup for a landline based VOIP service using a cellular dongle. Both necessitated high performance, robust, DNS infrastructure.

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Nominum Telstra

Case Study

3.1

Upgrading CustNet
The DNS service for Telstras CustNet (the network that provides Internet service for mobile subscribers) was originally provided by Telstra Wholesale. A recent upgrade of the Wholesale DNS to Nominums commercial-grade caching and authoritative DNS brought about a noticeable improvement in reliability of the DNS service . Not only did we see a nice performance improvement, but problems dropped to the floor after the upgrade to Nominum said Christine Winter, Technology Specialist, DNS Engineer at Telstra. Although pleased with the upgrade to the DNS service deployed by Telstra Wholesale the mobile group still made the decision to deploy their own DNS because they wanted to distribute it across their network in order to reduce latency and improve resilience and availability even further. Building out their own DNS infrastructure also ensured they could meet future regulatory requirements if changes were made.

4.1

Upgrading CustNet
Telstra CoreNet supports the control plane functions in their 3G and 4G networks. Although DNS lookups are integral to the proper functioning of both networks the 4G network imposes an even heavier load on the DNS since locating a network resource requires a succession for queries starting with NAPTR records pointing to service records and finally queries for A records. This can increase the load on the DNS 3x-5x and adds complexity.. As Christine Winter put it: When anything in the network needs to find anything it uses the DNS and in the 4G network there is an even higher reliance on DNS for session routing. By the time you get to the level of robustness and reliability required by LTE networks some versions of BIND in a box just wont cut it. You want to have confidence that it will work and work every single time. Given Telstra requirements for availability and robustness as well as rapid growth in service uptake it was again clear a commercial grade DNS solution was needed and Nominum caching and authoritative DNS software were the obvious choice. Over time the investment in Nominum has paid off. There have been no outages and the DNS infrastructure has easily absorbed growth in subscribers and queries. There has been a reduction in operational complexity since the Nominum software as a result of the extraordinary stability and reliability.

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Nominum Telstra

Case Study

5.1

The Summary
Telstra recognized the need to improve their DNS infrastructure to improve manageability and control, accommodate rapid growth, and meet far more rigorous technical demands of 4G networks as well as potential changes in the regulatory environment. Telstra recognized the value in choosing the best solution for vital network assets such as DNS and decided not to source a prepackaged solution from a single Network Equipment Provider (NEP) as part of a massive services contract. Specifically, NEP offerings didnt have routing functionality they required and they recognized without robust DNS, there simply wouldnt be a robust mobile Internet for their customers. As a result of their decision they joined some of the largest mobile service provider brands in the world and focused on choosing solutions that protect their multi-billion dollar mobile assets. The choice of Nominum for both their CustNet and CoreNet upgrades allowed them to exceed all of the technical requirements, while simplifying their operations.

About Nominum

Nominum is the leading global provider of innovative solutions for network operators. Our IDEAL ecosystem enables network operators, worldwide, to simultaneously achieve greater differentiation, efficiency, and agility by integrating subscriber applications and core network engines and by integrating the goals of business and technical internal teams to deliver a highly differentiated customer experience at the lowest possible long-term total cost of ownership. Powered by Nominums N2 Data Platform to leverage the data generated by the core DNS/DHCP and IT engines and to extend the functionality of applications, the Nominum IDEAL ecosystem provides solutions that allow network operators to thrive in an increasingly more difficult marketplace. Nominum is a global organization headquartered in Redwood City, CA.

Nominum, Inc
Address: Phone: Fax: website 2000 Seaport Boulevard, Suite 400 Redwood City, CA 94063 USA + 1 650-381-6000 + 1 650-381-6055 www.nominum.com