Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has unveiled an upgrade to its core mobile network technology that lets operators provide faster, more efficient mobile Internet services. The upgrade allows operators to offload Internet traffic at an optimal point in the network typically close to an Internet peering point in order to minimize the distance it is transmitted. This saves transport and traffic processing costs.
 Operators typically need to deploy relatively costly servers to process mobile data traffic, says Matti Palomaki, Head of Packet Core Product Management at NSN. Our new approach allows a high volume of Internet traffic, or any operator-specified traffic, to bypass these processing servers and legacy packet core gateway nodes (GGSNs). In the era of Smartphone-induced data growth, such offloading of traffic can deliver significant savings in next-generation HSPA and LTE networks.
Traffic offload can be deployed across Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Network Gateway (NG) and as a simple software upgrade to the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN). The Flexi NG and SGSN are key elements of Nokia Siemens Networks evolved packet core (EPC). Traffic offload can be deployed in both distributed and centralized gateways in 2G, 3G or LTE networks. The first phase of traffic offload is already available.
The network architecture for traffic offload is the simplest possible, says NSN. As offloading takes place in the Flexi NG mobile gateway, it does not require additional network elements along the signalling and data paths. The company says that the solution supports subscriber mobility in an optimal manner and can reduce delays in data transmission to improve the experience for people using real-time applications over mobile networks. In instances where an operator has distributed Internet peering points, the Flexi NG can easily be deployed as a distributed gateway at each of these points to reduce transport network costs, while the SGSN intelligently selects which of the distributed mobile gateways is closest to the subscriber.