Enriched with
Services

vDish—Class of Service for end-user apps Assigning the correct Class-of-Service for a session associated with an end-user app will have a significant impact on the app’s response times and latencies, which are a critical part of the UX. Games, for example, do not usually consume large amounts of bandwidth, yet are extremely latency sensitive. vDish is a service that first identifies sessions of end-user apps as they pass through the gateway. Then they associate packets of that session with a pre-configured Class-of-Service. We use the DSCP field for this purpose. The prime use-case of vDish is to map latency sensitive apps to Low-Latency DOCSIS (LLD) Service Flows. It offers far more flexible and more accurate classification of end-user apps than what is possible from the CMTS (which is how most solutions still work). The net result is a reduction of latency on the DOCSIS access network (from CPE to the CMTS) which is where DOCSIS lags far behind PON technologies. Using vDish a Provider may use LLD flows for games, video conferencing (we can even identify the video/voice sessions separately from the data in the same call) and other latency sensitive applications. It may also be used as a way of keeping important traffic (for those working at home) from the rest of the network (if your kids are gamers…). Not specific to DOCSIS, vDish may be used in the same way to assign priorities for sessions over a PON network.

vWifi—WiFi diagnostics Diagnosing problems in homeowners’ Wi-Fi networks is a support nightmare for most Service Providers. There are many types of services that address this problem – one of the popular ways is to use the ACS to read information and feed this to an analysis engine. This suffers from drawbacks in two ways. Firstly, the TR-069 protocol used by the ACS to access data in the gateway is slow and cumbersome. Secondly, the extent of the data available (for read or write) is defined by the data model that is implemented on the gateway. Many gateways support the standard TR-181 model, but this does not always have enough data for modern analysis engines. The vWifi service allows for the Wi-Fi data model to be extended to capture additional information from the in-home Wi-Fi network. The data is reported far more efficiently than via TR-069 and is deposited in an external data base that may be used by the analysis engine in its diagnosis. The actual parameters that vWifi adds to the data model is extremely flexible. The only restriction we place on it is that we know how to read them from the system. Beyond that, practically anything goes. All of this happens dynamically and without having to modify the on-gateway firmware at all. It is possible to extend the data model as often as necessary.

vMesh—An EasyMesh Controller Based on the popular prplMesh Controller, vMesh provide EasyMesh and prplMesh compliance for a meshed network. Fully integrated with TR-069 and TR-369 management schemes and interoperable with both standard EasyMesh and prplMesh Agents. Standard extenders from any supplier may be connected to vMesh. vMesh is fully containerized, may be downloaded dynamically and will run on the Launcher in any standard Linux distribution.

vApps—Per-app traffic analysis Service Providers often wish to see the types of applications their subscribers are running on their network—for tuning configuration, promotions, or bundle deals. vApps gathers traffic information from the home networks on a per-app basis and makes it available to the Provider via the standard provisioning system. No user-specific data is gathered, in accordance with GDPR. vApps is completely transparent to the Internet service itself. It does not affect network throughput or latencies. Any hardware accelerated packet forwarding remains fully enabled. And the list of recognized apps may be easily extended without any software changes or system restarts. This happens through a sophisticated classification process that combines simple packet field checking (like destination port numbers) with advanced features of stateful classification and heuristic analysis, where some apps are recognized by traffic patterns. The result is an accurate identification of end-user apps, able to handle dynamic port assignment and even differentiate between voice/video and data channels in the same app where relevant.

vMng—Data model enhancement Every gateway stack implementation includes the implementation of a data model: the set of parameters in the gateway that may be read or written from an ACS (the management server). This frequently is the standard TR-181 model but not always (and not always completely). What the ACS is able to do depends on it being able to access the right sort and amount of parameters on the gateway—in other words, the implementation of the data model will determine what type of functionality may be supported from the ACS. Changing the implementation of the data model usually means changing code in the gateway firmware, recompilation, new images, system testing and fields upgrades—a long and expensive process. vMng is able to do all of this immediately and with no firmware changes. Data models may be enriched in almost any way without even restarting the gateway (let alone changing firmware) and as many times as you like. Moreover, we are not restricted to TR-069. TR-369 and SNMP are both supported as well.

vUSP—USP for legacy TR-369 (USP) is the latest in provisioning protocols and looks to be widely adopted on home gateways in the coming years. But there is an enormous amount of deployed equipment that does not support TR-369. And much of it is unlikely to either, as older equipment is sometimes not supported, lacking in memory to carry new protocols or simply too expensive to justify any sort of ROI. This is where vUSP enters. It allows Providers to add TR-369 support to legacy equipment simply and without losing existing functionality. No firmware changes are necessary, and support becomes almost immediate. As a result, Providers may keep all network equipment on the same management scheme and provide the latest functionality defined in modern standards.

vDLNA—Play multi-media from the Cloud We all sort multimedia files on the Cloud, in Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, or others. Most homes also have networked TV’s that may play multimedia information over the network using DLNA (and uPNP). vDLNA combines these two. It makes cloud-based multi-media information visible on the home network via uPNP so that they may be played from a standard networked TV. No local client (on the TV) needs to be installed. Nor do the files need to be downloaded before played.

Ask us about 3rd party services that may be supported on our platform: Smart Home apps Motion Detection Elderly Care