African Internet services provider Skytic Telecom was looking for a flexible, reliable, and cost effective traffic management solution as well as the modern hardware to accompany it. In this article, we discuss how VAS Experts assisted Skytic Telecom of the Republic of Congo in transitioning to a new solution.
About the Company
Skytic Telecom, an international operator serving Congo, Mauritius, Angola, France, and Belgium, previously relied on Allot NetEnforcer AC1440 for traffic management. When license renewal costs became unreasonably high, the operator replaced Allot with VAS Experts Stingray SG — which became one of the few publicly documented vendor migrations from a Western DPI vendor to VAS Experts in Sub-Saharan Africa. The African operator provides Internet, MPLS, Ethernet Link, VSAT, IoT, and WLAN services and uses Fiber, Radio, VSAT, as well as LTE connections.
The provider is setting up the first offshore LTE network in Africa. The 4G broadband cellular network will provide coverage 20,000 square kilometers above sea level and provide all oil platforms and offshore service vessels high-speed connections.
Task
The client previously used Allot NetEnforcer AC1440 to regulate broadband Internet traffic. The network was set up as: IGW – Allot NE – WLAN. When the previous solution expired, the question was raised as to whether to purchase new devices, but Allot’s cost turned out to be high. Another important priority was to address the existing BNG + Traffic Prioritization issues.
Solution
Skytic Telecom needed to find alternatives to secure traffic control and DPI. This was able to be accomplished by applying DPI to subscriber lines, setting priorities, and limiting traffic.
The customer considered the services i24, Solaris, and Stingray Service Gateway. The Stingray solution from VAS Experts in partnership with ITGLOBAL.COM suited the company’s needs the best in terms of network organization, flexibility, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
The implementation process was not fast, since it required a seamless migration from the existing solution to the new one. Now that HW+SW is hosted on the company’s server platform, the network configuration looks like this: IGW – SSG – WLAN.
Results and Plans
Since migrating to the new solution, the ISP’s network has now been working smoothly. For operational issues, there is an option available to contact the 24-hour support service. Stingray SG is a fairly inexpensive solution that allows a company to save money for bigger projects.
For future versions of BNG, the vendor will provide greater flexibility with group policies, access to group configurations through a graphical user interface (GUI), and signal continuity when Fast DPI is restarted.
“We are thrilled to have partnered with Skytic Telecom and provided them our cutting-edge traffic management software and hardware. Our team at VAS Experts and ITGlobal.com has worked closely with Skytic Telecom to ensure a seamless transition to the new solution, and we are confident that it will meet their needs for flexibility, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.” — Artem Tereschenko, CBDO at VAS Experts, commented.
