Sonera launch first IP-based network - Company Business and Marketing

CommunicationsWeek International, Oct 23, 2000 by Roy Rubenstein

Sonera Oyj has launched what it claims is the world's first network functioning as an intelligent Internet. The Helsinki-based company says that it now operates the first Internet Protocol-based network to be fully provisioned for quality of service management and applications billing.

"The current Internet has to be a manageable Internet, otherwise the whole thing will slow down," said Pekka Toytari, Sonera's IP strategy director.

"Customers should be able to do things the way they like when they need high-quality services, and when they don't. They don't want to pay extra."

Analysts said Sonera's small national network and Finland's technology research and development-based infrastructure have helped the operator produce full-managed IP networking ahead of the rest of the industry.

"Sonera is a benchmark of innovation," said Chris Lewis, managing director of research and consulting at the Yankee Group Europe, of Watford, England.

"What they are doing sounds like what people should be doing," said Bob Larribeau, director of edge switching and routing at RHK Inc. of San Francisco, California. "It sounds straightforward conceptually, but to do it, and make it work, that's pretty significant."

The Finnish national operator has focussed on adding intelligence to the edge of the network. "It is not just about rapid transmission [in the core], but also differentiated services," said Mika Uusitalo, vice president of Sonera's mobile internet technologies.

The result is a network not only supporting four quality service levels, IP virtual private networks (VPNs), and firewall security, but also a way to bill for the resulting higher level services.

Sonera's announcement is the second in a month designed to fulfill the promise of multiservice IP networks. QoS Networks of Dublin, Ireland, announced a global net work designed to add intelligence to the Internet. It offers a portfolio of IP class of service guarantees achieved using routers from Lucent Technologies of Murray Hill, New Jersey, which can differentiate traffic using up to 2,000 priority levels.

But QoS Networks does not own the underlying network on which it runs its services. Instead it leases capacity from Global Crossing Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda (CWI, 25 September, p24).

In contrast, Sonera has engineered all the changes in its own network, using a combination of traffic management and traffic shaping. For traffic management, Sonera has used the diffserv scheme to implement four classes of service: three priority levels on top of the Internet's default best effort offering.

"This is one of the first serious applications of diffserv for quality of service," said RHK's Larribeau.

Traffic shaping enables the network user to dictate the bandwidth to be reserved for a given application. Combining the two produces the overall quality of service guarantee.

Using diffserv instead of the multiprotocol label switching schemes was a straightforward choice for Sonera.

"Until MPLS is fully supported it brings nothing new to our customers," said Uusitalo. "We will not implement it until it really brings us value," he said, confirming a growing Scandinavian trend against MPLS.

One target application for Sonera's network--currently available in Finland's largest cities--is providing IP VPNs to small to medium-sized enterprises. Two such SMEs in Finland are already involved in a private trial (CWI, 14 December 1998, p1).

In the first half of 2001, it will be extended to Sonera's international network users. "IP VPNs should be the main workhorse of data communications," said Yankee Group's Lewis.