Hybrid Access Gateway (ATSSS Network Node)

Introduction

Tessares’ MPTCP Hybrid Access Gateway (HAG) software is a highly efficient TCP to MPTCP proxy developed by the creators of the MPTCP protocol, enabling short or long-lived multi-path aggregation.

 

Per server, the Tessares HAG supports tens of thousands of Hybrid CPEs (for Hybrid Access) and hundreds of thousands of Handsets (for Cellular/Wi-Fi convergence). Various scenarios of multiple instances are deployable for scaling and backup

 

The HAG is packaged in a virtual machine, and as such can run on bare metal or in a virtual environment (stand alone or VNF).

 

The software is compliant with Broadband Forum standards (TR-348 and TR-378) for implicit and explicit MPTCP based hybrid access.

 

Tessares Hybrid Access Gateway

Function

The HAG’s core capability is aggregation. It is a highly efficient TCP ⇆MPTCP Proxy which manages MPTCP subflows  on two different access networks based on a single TCP connection between the end-server and the HAG. The HAG has access to two interfaces towards the two different access networks.

 

Standards Based Solution

Tessares has followed the industry standards from the Broadband Forum (BBF) namely TR-348 Hybrid Access Broadband Network Architecture and its L4 Multipath Architecture using Multipath TCP. The HAG follows the TR-378 Nodal Requirements for Hybrid Access Broadband Networks and its implicit mode, using the HAG as a transparent proxy.

Tessares actively contributes to the IETF draft 0-RTT TCP Convert Protocol in relation to BBF explicit mode and the 3GPP release 16 (ATSSS).

 

HAG Features


Northbound Interfaces

The HAG provides a set of alarms, and exposes metrics and counters through northbound interfaces:

  • SNMP
  • NETCONF
  • CLI




Least Costly Network First

The HAG can give priority to one of the two access networks, usually the fixed one, enabling the least cost network first, and then overflowing to the second network if more capacity is needed by a subscriber.



Aggregated Bandwidth Limit (ABL)

The HAG can limit the aggregated bandwidth of the two networks, enabling the same speed package for many subscribers whatever their fixed line profile. Find out more in our ABL example.




Cloud Based

The HAG is available as a virtual machine (VM) image to be deployed on bare metal or a cloud environment. The VM having the advantage of being easy to update / upgrade, or duplicate if more instances are required.



Blacklists

Blacklisting servers or services is possible based on the 5-tuple.
Blacklisting is useful if some traffic does not need to be proxied to MPTCP, or if the speed of some services does not need to be boosted.