Cisco - GTE Internetworking

Flat-rate "all you can eat" pricing is common in today's Internet services market, but few providers who rely on this billing strategy alone are profitable. Innovative billing models are becoming critically important as competition increases and the market evolves. The more service providers know about user behavior, the better prepared they are to meet service expectations and efficiently manage capacity.

Usage detail enables flexible billing practices that combine various rating elements into a price structure that more accurately reflects the cost of operation, creates opportunities for increased revenue, and penetrates previously untapped markets. Cisco NetFlow has allowed GTE Internetworking to realize new revenue opportunities through usage-based billing.

Introducing Web Advantage

GTE's Web Advantage service offers a variety of corporate Web site hosting services ranging from shared hosts for smaller businesses to dedicated servers that meet the needs of large enterprises. A key ingredient to a successful Web site is reliable network connectivity. Each Web server, whether shared, dedicated, or customer-owned, is located at a GTE Internetworking regional data center with dedicated, high-bandwidth access to the public Internet. Data centers are powered by redundant Cisco CatalystŽ 5000 series switches and Cisco 7500 series border routers connected directly to GTE's world-class backbone network.

Pay For What You Use

GTE Internetworking keeps a close eye on Web Advantage traffic with Cisco NetFlow products
(see http://www.cisco.com/go/netflow). Cisco NetFlow combines network-layer switching with services that provide quality of service (QoS) and traffic accounting information. GTE uses NetFlow to enable innovative, usage-based billing practices. According to John Boone, director of Infrastructure Architecture and Standards at GTE Internetworking, "NetFlow allows GTE to charge Web Advantage customers for only the bandwidth actually used, avoiding the over-or-under-billing associated with other methods."

To accomplish this, NetFlow runs on each Cisco 7500 border router, continuously counting IP traffic sent and received by each Web Advantage server. A Cisco FlowCollector at each data center accumulates usage records exported by these routers. GTE uploads these records to a central site to support invoice generation. This same data is also used for trending and capacity planning, allowing GTE Internetworking to remain a step ahead of customer demand.

GTE Internetworking went live with Web Advantage usage-based billing on August 1, 1998. After carefully engineering roll-out to ensure all network components would be up to the task, "Each data center took just a few days to bring NetFlow online," says Boone.

Know What You Pay For

GTE Internetworking includes a usage summary with each Web Advantage invoice and offers online subscriber access to usage detail. Web Advantage customers can use Web browsers to view usage graphs for preceding months. According to Boone, "Online access to usage detail represents a significant competitive advantage." Armed with usage information, customers can easily quantify Web site traffic, spot emerging trends, and better anticipate future costs.

Counting packets at high volume can be a daunting task. NetFlow's flexible aggregation schemes allow GTE Internetworking to collect just the right amount of usage detail, with accuracy verified by their own stringent quality controls. Each week, GTE compares NetFlow results to traffic data obtained through periodic polling to identify discrepancies. "NetFlow measurements have been far more accurate than sampled measurements," says Boone "Even under heavier traffic conditions."

Architecture for Service Provider Class Billing

NetFlow is just one component of a variety of technologies Cisco offers to measure network usage. Additional technologies exist for measuring usage on IP, dial, ATM, PVC, SVC, frame relay, and voice networks.

Cisco has a three-tiered billing architecture (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/servprod/sms/acct/tech/cba_wp.htm), designed to meet the needs of the Internet service provider market. Today, Cisco offers a variety of products that facilitate deployment of custom and commercial billing systems and rating models just as NetFlow does. The Cisco strategy is to focus on instrumenting new services and providing innovative usage data collection and aggregation solutions, while using open interfaces and mediation products to leverage partner and customer billing applications.

"Scalable, reliable usage data collection is the difficult part," says Boone. "We are encouraged to see Cisco focusing its resources and talents on enhancing products such as NetFlow."

Cisco Billing Solutions Enable Success

The Internet services market is a flourishing one. Service differentiation is imperative for service providers: to respond to competitive forces, they must be able to rapidly develop and implement new services with the proper infrastructure to bill for them. Cisco understands that billing is, in fact, a differentiating service. The open, extensible Cisco billing architecture gives a service provider the information needed to pinpoint revenue opportunities, identify and control network costs, demonstrate that service-level agreements are met, and offer innovative rating packages.

With products such as NetFlow, Cisco provides end-to-end solutions that meet service provider needs today, while growing to meet the market challenges of tomorrow. The network usage measurement, collection, and aggregation infrastructure of Cisco products enable usage-based billing for a variety of high-bandwidth, New World IP services.

Today, more than 1000 Web Advantage customers such as ZDNet and the Boston Globe benefit from GTE Internetworking's use of leading-edge Cisco technology. "Web Advantage customers appreciate that they are not being billed for more than they use," says Boone. "Accurate usage data, combined with the ability to provide online customer access to usage detail, represents a significant competitive advantage for GTE Internetworking."

Table Of Contents

Customer Profile

GTE Internetworking Web Advantage Uses Cisco NetFlow for Innovative Billing

Introducing Web Advantage

Pay For What You Use

Know What You Pay For

Architecture for Service Provider Class Billing

Cisco Billing Solutions Enable Success