Service Delivery Engine

Control Plane Intelligence for Network Policy Control

The Service Delivery Engine (SDE) is a key component of Sandvine’s network policy control platform, operating in the control plane to enable communication with external systems and implementation of multi-vendor network policies that span many enforcement points.

Within a network policy control deployment, the SDE provides the Policy and Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Provisioning and Subscriber Mapping that today’s solutions require.

• Per-subscriber services and billing use cases require an accurate real-time association between data flows and subscriber profile information; working in real-time, the SDE ensures every traffic flow is associated with the correct subscriber, in any IP environment
• As the policy decision interface to external network elements and systems, the SDE processes transactions that provide updates on network conditions or changes to subscriber state or entitlement, and ensures that relevant information is passed to the appropriate network elements and control systems
• The SDE also houses the control plane portion of the network’s business logic, accepting inputs, evaluating policies, deciding upon outcomes, and signaling to other elements as required
• The SDE maintains a real-time inventory of subscriber entitlement by accepting inputs from billing systems and providing updates to those same systems based on measured subscriber behavior; this subscriber entitlement information is then made available to other elements throughout the network, including the PTS in the data plane

Unique Capabilities that Deliver Distinct Benefits

The Service Delivery Engine incorporates unique capabilities that convey real-world operator benefits, including:

• Rapid service introduction: rapid solution development, customization and deployment which enables service providers to introduce services faster than the competition
• Access-agnostic, multi-vendor policies: broad interface support allows interaction with Sandvine and non-Sandvine network elements and systems
• Distributed intelligence: policy capabilities unified across control and data planes enable high-performance real-world policy control without overwhelming signaling traffic