Hybrid Access Gateway software

Introduction

Tessares provides bonding software for the Hybrid Access Gateway (HAG) in order to enable aggregation based on Multipath TCP. It is a very efficient TCP to MPTCP proxy developed by the creators of the MPTCP protocol.

 

● Tessares HAG software can scale to thousands of HCPEs connected to the same server, and multiple instances can be deployed for an active-backup scenario.

 

● The HAG is packaged in a virtual machine, and as such can run on bare metal or in a virtual environment. Tessares is actively working on providing the HAG as a virtual network function, to be deployed in a cloud native environment.

 

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

 

Tessares Hybrid Access Gateway

Bonding Software

The HAG core capability is doing the aggregation. It is a highly efficient TCP ⇆ MPTCP Proxy that allows to create 2 MPTCP connections 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.

 

Standard Solution

For its Hybrid Access Gateway, Tessares has followed the industry standards from the Broadband Forum (BBF). The hybrid access follows the 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 that is mentioned both for the 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 be set to use in priority one of the two network access. This allows to use the least costly network first, usually the fixed one, and then overflow on the second network if more capacity is needed by the subscribers.



Aggregated Bandwidth Limit (ABL)

The HAG allows to limit the aggregated bandwidth from the two networks. This allows to have the same speed package for many subscribers whatever their fixed line profile. Find out more in our ABL use case.




Cloud Ready

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



Blacklists

The HAG allows to blacklist some servers or services based on the 5-tuple.
This is needed if some traffic does not need to be proxied to MPTCP, or if the speed of some services do not need to be boosted by the hybrid access.