Now more than ever, predictable and secure remote access to critical network operations is essential to success.
One of our USA-based customers with a High Performance Computing (HPC) fiber network in Asia (spanning multiple countries) needed a secure, predictable, and reliable cellular (LTE) out-of-band management connectivity solution to ensure critical access to network operations devices (switches, etc.).
Our customer needed the ability to monitor and manage the network from anywhere in the world, and needed the ability to do so without relying on “call home” architectures that are dangerous to implement when you can’t get reliable and consistent physical access to the network PoP locations for on-site response.
Our customer tried utilizing a “global programmable SIM” from a competitor, but real field testing in Asia revealed serious carrier-level networking configuration issues that made access to the devices from out-of-country unreliable and in some cases impossible.
Furthermore, our customer needed a solution that was quick to deploy and needed the costs to be manageable and scalable alongside their service offering expansion.
Enter Expeto's Private LTE Core on AWS
To solve our customer’s OOB problems, we deployed Expeto’s software-defined LTE EPC solution stack on Amazon Web Services infrastructure (VPC and EC2).
A few of the key advantages we delivered by implementing this architecture are the following:
- Predictable and Configurable IP Addressing - Since Expeto’s LTE Core lives inside your network, you can architect the OOB device subnets like any other subnet. Setup an Expeto “System” element with a CIDR for each of the LTE subnets in your network architecture, and assign OOB device SIMs to those systems from a dashboard. LTE-connected OOB devices in Asia are now on our customer’s AWS VPC network in the AWS USA Region of choice. Boom. Private network extension to the edge without lots of complexity layers and other vendors.
- Private IP Addressing Without VPN - Another benefit of Expeto’s EPC living inside the network is that there’s no need to rely on VPN solutions or dynamic DNS-based solutions to “call home” over an unstable public IP address provided by a carrier, simply to get remote access to the device. Simply determine what static or DHCP-based IP you want assigned to the device via Expeto’s platform, and you’re done. The LTE-connected device is assigned the IP address of choice. This is both a reliability and security benefit to our customer. Fewer technology layers to manage and worry about, and no publicly addressable device to defend from the Internet.
Below are a few diagrams that provide an overview of traditional OOB management network design using cellular, vs Expeto and AWS.
Contact us to deploy truly smart Out-of-Band Management Networks for your network.
Get Started