ZTE Cache System Solution

ZTE Speedor Cache Solution

ZTE Speedor Product Solution is feature-reached, future oriented carrier grade Cache Solution. Different from other enterprise or security appliance focusing on mass consumer market, ZTE keeps developing its Cache Solution to newest telecom industry tendency. Total solution covering abundant feature in modularization design, it enables a resilient Cache Solution.

ZTE Speedor Solution accelerates and controls traffic from increasingly popular video sharing web sites YouTube, RapidShare, MegaUpload, MySpace, Facebook and others. It supports caching for FLV, SWF, MP4 and WMV file types. The solution does not require proxy servers setting, or any changes in client configuration.

Below diagrams showing high level architecture of ZTE Speedor solution and relationships between modules:

Figure 1  Solution Overview

Figure 2  Solution Architecture

Load Balancer is a critical component for each Cache Cluster group. Load Balancer manager traffic to and from ZX-Cache-2032-C not only load sharing among ZX-Cache-2032-C but also keeping similar request going to same ZX-Cache-2032-C all the time. Load Balancer monitoring all ZX-Cache-2032-C attached to it avoids overload which introduces service degradation or disruption.

In ZTE Speedor solution, Load Balancer is provided by integrating some well-known L4/7 switch products, such as F5 BIG-IP LTM, Citrix NetScaler or Radware AppDirector.

• Cache Server

ZTE Cache Server：ZX-Cache-2032-C consists of two key components, Speedor software and C2000 series hardware platform.

ZTE Speedor software realizes proxy and cache function for performance demanding environments. It designed to maximizing performance by utilizing multi-core CPU and large RAM. Besides its broad support to various application and protocol, it also enhances traffic management, access control and content filtering functions. With abundant refreshment policy management, there is no fear for serving obsolete content to subscriber because of caching.

The C2000 series platform for Speedor is optimized network appliance platform with powerful and stable performance. Security is fortified by the tailored OS also providing proved high performance to run Speedor.

• Speedor Manager

Speedor Manager is network or element management software for ZTE Speedor solution. It manages a large amount of ZX-Cache-2032-C and Load Balancer in cluster. Cache System in distributed deployment needs centralized management covering monitor, configuration and authorization, also known as FCPS. ZTE Speedor Manager is developed to fulfill ISP demanding network management requirement.

The Speedor Manager allows administrators to control and monitor a batch of ZX-Cache-2032-C remotely and centrally. Administrators could realize availability, performance, configuration and fault management, following concept of industry best practice, with a single integrated system. All log, event, statistics are stored together facilitating search, analyze and reporting. Configuration for a group of ZX-Cache-2032-C could be done in a single stroke saving maintenance man power and reducing chance of human error.

Performance Management module could provide abundant statistics and report for ZX-Cache-2032-C and Load Balancer performance measures, including CPU, RAM, I/O, network, HDD and hit ratio, etc. Application layer statistics and reports for requests and content types are also available for better insight to the traffic and Cache System efficiency. Besides, Speedor Manager analyzes performance data of multiply ZX-Cache-2032-C and Load Balancer in clustered manner giving administrator a thorough picture of whole system.

Speedor Manager also supports integration with other NMS via northbound interface.

• Network Integration

Speaking of implementation, cache solution deployment also needs professional engineering work to roll out the design. Challenging work including designing the policy based routing on gateway routers, planning and implementing migration so as to put up the Cache system into operation. ZTE core competitiveness also includes professional service capacity in full project life cycle manner, design, implementation and support.

Solution Deployment

Figure 3  Network Topology

Shown as above topology, for Cache System there are two logical locations for deployment,

• Cluster Manager Servers (Optional), deployed at NOC for centrally monitoring and maintaining cache system
• Cache System, including Load Balancer and ZX-Cache-2032-C, deployed together with Internet Gateway devices

Via 10GbE or GbE connection, Load Balancer connects to Internet Gateway(IGW) Core routers. Policy-based routing or WCCP will be configured in Core routers to redirect intended traffic, such as HTTP, FTP and many others, to Load Balancer. Policy-based routing is able to automatically bypass Load Balancer without perceptible disruption when Load Balancer fails.

A group of ZX-Cache-2032-C connecting to a Load Balancer by GbE forms a Cache Cluster. Load balancer monitors the health of ZX-Cache-2032-C, and traffic will be forwarded and balanced to difference ZX-Cache-2032-C in same Cache Cluster.

Solution Highlights

• Content Pre-loading, ZTE Speedor can pre-load with specified contents from websites, manually or automatically at scheduled time. It also can purge specified contents from the cache storage manually or automatically. There is a provision to restrict the Cache from caching specified contents (URLs or content types).
• Bandwidth Management, ZTE Speedor offers a powerful Bandwidth Management framework to control bandwidth usage. Unlike traditional packet shaping products, ZTE Speedor bandwidth management capabilities allow customers to determine the bandwidth characteristics needed for a given request and response. The policy triggers that can be used to determine the bandwidth usage are:
  -　Client address
  -　User
  -　Group
  -　URL Filtering Category
  -　Content-type
  -　Time
  -　Protocol
  -　Method
  Bandwidth can be controlled inbound and outbound between the client and Cache and the Cache and the server.
  These parameters can be used to define a bandwidth class:
  Parent: Used to create a bandwidth-management hierarchy.
  -　Minimum Bandwidth: Minimum amount of bandwidth guaranteed for traffic in this class.
  -　Maximum Bandwidth: Maximum amount of bandwidth allowed for traffic in this class.
  -　Priority: Relative priority level among classes in the same hierarchy.
• Blacklisting, restrict URLs that are not lawful to access
• Authentication, implementing security by integrating various authentication mechanisms
• Access Control List, powerful built-in ACL engine based on Client IP, Server IP, URL, such as the definition of complex filtering and control strategy.
• Easy Management, Web-based management interface, user-friendly remote management.
• Policy based Caching, Administrator could define various policy to make best use of the Cache capacity
• Adaptive Support to Internet Application, ZTE Cache product is resilient and adaptive to ever changing Internet Application.
• Fast Deployment, flexible work mode and routing option minimize impact on service and existent network
• Service Continuity, ZTE Cache solution is designed to realize service continuity by technologic means even without costly 1+1 redundancy.
• Network Management Integration, with EMS and NBI ready, ZTE Cache solution enable unified network management integrated with OSS
• Carrier Grade Solution, ZTE solution focusing on Telecom market, ground up built for Carrier requirements, especially for large scale deployment, unified network management and high throughput.