News
F5 Converged Carrier Infrastructure Enables Spanish Operator R To Scale For Improved Subscriber Services
February 2012 by Marc Jacob
F5 Networks, Inc. announced that Spanish fibre optic telecommunications operator R has implemented F5 converged carrier infrastructure solutions in its ISP network to take advantage of service virtualization, global load balancing, more robust web application security and a vastly improved ability to scale service provisioning on a single VIPRION platform.
R’s business is built on the provision of quadruple play services to subscribers based primarily in the Galicia region of Spain. Subscriber base growth and legacy infrastructure issues prompted a technology renewal project aimed at delivering a consolidated infrastructure that would be a long-term platform to deliver existing and new web application services. Web application security and traffic management between data centres were also important requirements.
Ignacio Penedo, Network Engineering Manager at R: “F5’s reputation in the market was key as we began to consider which vendors could provide the necessary carrier grade solutions to form R’s platform for technology renewal and future growth.”
Margarita Martinez, head of ISPs at R: "The evolution to cloud environments and the transfer of client infrastructure to the data centre results in greater demand for both client connections and for client access to services. Similarly, this evolution drives the need for more flexible services deployment and a simplified infrastructure and network architecture. These considerations, as well as the total cost of ownership of the F5 VIPRION platform relative to other offerings, were the compelling factors in our decision”.
VIPRION’s vCMP technology was an important factor for R as it allows different services to be logically isolated, even on a single blade. Unique to F5, this technology combines virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities to help customers efficiently consolidate and manage application and service delivery. In turn, this can dramatically decrease both capital and operations costs. To further leverage vCMP technology, R also implemented F5 BIG-IP® Application Security Manager and plans to roll out F5 BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager on the same VIPRION platform. Consolidating these network functions will enable R to replace several legacy point products and reduce the total cost of ownership for providing its services to customers.
The VIPRION 2400 is a midrange platform that enables a broader range of customers to take advantage of the inherent capabilities of the VIPRION architecture, including on-demand throughput, SSL processing, compression, and CPU resources. In addition, VIPRION solutions act as a SuperVIP™ - a virtual IP that can span multiple blades - enabling applications to harness the processing power of all the blades within the system. Because of this unique capability, VIPRION solutions with vCMP technology provide customers with carrier-class scalability and reliability.
About R
R, the Galician fibre optic telecommunications operator, has spent a decade deploying its own network, street by street, in Galicia (Spain) and today offers subscribers advanced telephony, Internet, interactive multichannel digital television and mobile services. R currently has over 275,000 customers and has invested more than 850 million € in its network.
