In the Middle East, ISPs are often faced with the fact that the users with unlimited data plans provide Internet access to third parties. Since it is difficult to catch such “entrepreneurs” without the use of specialized software, ISPs need a solution that can help identify unscrupulous subscribers.

In this article, we describe how ITGLOBAL.COM’s professionals, with the support of local partner BitByte, LLC, implemented a solution for Noor Albidaya to monitor and analyze internet traffic, which ended up helping the ISP track suspicious user traffic while managing to comply with stringent regulatory requirements.

Client Profile

Company name: Noor Albidaya

Industry: Internet Service Provider

Company Origin: Iraq

Website: Noor Albidaya

Customer Needs

Traffic reselling, also known as Line Tethering, was one of the key issues that had been negatively impacting the performance of Noor Albidaya’s network and revenue. Customers with unlimited data plans were able to provide paid Internet access to their neighbors or anyone they wanted with impunity. The ISP could not identify those particular subscribers without using costly technical means, resulting in significant traffic spikes and financial losses for the business.

Meanwhile, Iraq has a telecom industry regulation that, at the state level, prohibits its citizens from using certain websites, applications, and services. Within the framework of that law, Internet providers are obliged to blacklist such resources and block their customers from accessing them. Ignoring the requirements of the regulator could incur serious sanctions and fines.

To solve the issue of unscrupulous subscribers and comply with the law, Noor Albidaya decided to seek out an effective platform for monitoring and analyzing traffic, which could be flexibly adjusted to the business’ requirements.

Solution by ITGLOBAL.COM

To accomplish Noor Albidaya’s goal, ITGLOBAL.COM’ professionals suggested implementing a traffic management solution by VAS Experts, Stingray Service Gateway (SSG). The SSG platform is based on Deep Packet Inspection technology and is suitable for telecom operators, Internet service providers, and other major market players of the telecommunication industry.

SSG uses standard x86 Intel or AMD-based servers as the hardware platform for SSG installation. This allows IPSs to choose the equipment from a variety of hardware vendors, based on their preferences, local market specifics, and acquisition power, without having to rely on any particular hardware vendor. On top of analyzing and classifying traffic packets, the solution has some additional functions available by default, including analytical real-time reporting, subscribers notifications, protection against DOS and DDoS attacks, among others.

Project Stages

• SSG testing: In the first phase of the project, after clarification of the customer’s exact requirements, ITGLOBAL.COM company provided the customer the SSG platform free of charge for testing purposes for a period of 1 month. Within that period the necessary software was installed on Noor Albidaya’s equipment and access was provided to the entire functionality of the platform.
• Launch of the platform: During the testing, Noor Albidaya’s specialists evaluated the effectiveness of traffic management, search and analysis of suspicious customer traffic, network parameter control of service quality, the blocking of prohibited Internet content, and other additional features that are available on the platform right out of the box. Moreover, the customer added on some additional functionality that was not initially planned for, since they had no idea that was possible.

To accomplish its objectives, the Internet provider chose the following package: BNG 20G (for up to 15 Gbps of incoming traffic) with a CGNAT component (carrier-grade network address translation) and statistics exporting inIPFIX format. 3 instances of the software platform were installed on three servers in different locations with 10G,15G, and 15G traffic, combined in a single unified traffic management solution.

Project Results

Since the Stingray Service Gateway platform has launched, the Internet provider Noor Albidaya has been able to fulfill all the requirements of state regulators in terms of blocking prohibited web resources, has managed to track suspicious user traffic with the help of analytical reports, and has added a range of extra functions that help to improve the quality of their service and increase their revenue.

“Internet service providers in emerging markets have a number of different challenges, especially in the Middle East. There are strict government regulations, IT infrastructure is expensive, customers have greatly varying purchasing power, and there is a constant demand for quality improvement as well as tough competition in general. We are happy that our solutions help ISPs to survive and grow on the market. And with Noor Albidaya, we have seen that even during the PoC phase, our Stingray SG platform was able to help them grow. In the end, they contracted more licenses than they’d initially planned for. Moreover, they obtained more useful functionality than they were looking for in the very beginning. It is important for us to bring new technologies that help our customers to become more and more successful.”

Oleg Arsenyev, director of international development at ITGLOBAL.COM company group, announced

Unlike the more well-known solutions of global vendors, ITGLOBAL.COM along with VAS Experts offered and implemented in Noor Albidaya’s IT infrastructure a scalable and customizable solution that took into account the specifics of the Iraqi market along with enabling affordable technical support and a flexible approach to business needs.

“Initially implementation was a little bit complicated seeing as the Stingray SG product was an unknown to us. But after examining the detailed online documentation and configuring the solution together with vendor specialists in the PoC phase, we identified significant benefits compared to other market products. We would like to thank ITGLOBAL.COM, BitByte, and VAS Experts engineers for their patience and availability in supporting us with this solution and their additional recommendations that they are always ready to provide.”

Noor Abidaya internet service provider CTO Anas Mohammed, shared