The feature-rich Aricent Diameter Stack complies with the latest 3GPP specifications and offers Carrier-grade functionalities. A few prominent features of Aricent's Diameter Stack are listed as under:

• Compliance
• Base: RFCs 3588 and 3539
• 3GPP TS 29.230
• Sh: 3GPP TS 29.328 v6.3.0 Release 6 and 3GPP TS 29.329 v6.3.0 Release 6
• Cx: 3GPP TS 29.229 v6.6.0 Release 6 and 3GPP TS 29.228 v6.8.0 Release 6
• Ro: RFC 4006 and 3GPP 32.299 v650 and 3GPP TS 32.225
• Rf: RFC 3588 and 3GPP 32.299 v650 and 3GPP TS 32.260 v6.4.03
• RFC 4006


• Relay, Proxy, and the Redirect Server

The Aricent Diameter Stack supports relay, proxy and redirect server functionalities.


• Failover/ Failback

The Aricent Diameter Stack offers superior standards-compliance and protocol functionalities. Besides compliance to all 3GPP specifications, The Stack also supports Fail Over and Fail Back procedures - requirements important from the perspective of specifications. The Fail Over and Fail Back procedures, as supported by the Aricent Diameter Stack, are explained below:


• Failover: The Diameter Node maintains two connections - one each with primary and secondary peer nodes. The health of these connections is determined by periodic exchange of messages. Should a problem occur in the connection with the primary peer, the device watchdog timer expires and the status of the corresponding peer is treated as SUSPECT and the Diameter Node switches to the alternate/secondary peer.



• Failback: After the failover, the Diameter Node periodically tries to reconnect to the closed (primary) peer. When the primary peer responds, the connection is resumed.

Carrier-Grade Features
The Aricent Diameter has been specifically designed to deal with the most stringent requirements of the emerging networks, such as the IMS.. It has been comprehensively tested and benchmarked for high performance across various platforms. It offers customers a clear competitive advantage over competing solutions.

• Performance: Today, performance has become one of the biggest challenges facing new age networks. Ever-increasing user traffic, high efficiency requirements, peak hour blues, and CAPEX/OPEX limitations, further increase the criticality of performance. The Aricent Diameter offers unrivalled performance figures obtained through a series of several optimization activities conducted at system, stack, and transport levels. It has been benchmarked for high performance in all types of deployments - low-end, mid-end, as well as high-end. The solution has undergone extensive laboratory testing on platforms, such as RHEL 4.0 and Solaris 10. Its high performance (>3500 TPS) helps customers maximize the Return on Investment (RoI).



• Scalability: Scalability is one of the major concerns for Operators the world over. Because of its distributed architecture, the Aricent Diameter can be easily scaled up. Based on user requirements, multiple instances of DFNs and APNs can be spawned on multiple servers. This enables an Operator to deploy a Diameter application initially handling a thin subscriber base, which can later be scaled up to handle millions of subscribers. It can be achieved with a marginal incremental investment to the initial CAPEX, bringing down the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).



• Flexibility: Being a highly flexible solution, the Aricent Diameter can support multiple application extensions, such as Sh, Cx, Dx, Rf, Ro, and CCA. In addition, it can be used to develop multiple IMS network elements. It supports a generic parser and a data dictionary that allows addition of customized Attribute Value Pair (AVPs) and messages to cater to new application extensions. This decreases the overall costs for customers since the same product can be enhanced with minimal investment to cater to any new kind of requirement that might arise in future.



• Roadmap: Diameter is an evolving protocol and is currently being standardized. It implies that substantial enhancements/modifications will periodically be made in the Diameter specifications. Aricent has a well-defined roadmap for the Diameter product in sync with its overall strategy of being a leader in the IMS domain. Aricent continuously tracks all new developments in the IMS sphere and takes them as inputs for its future release upgrades. The Aricent mandate is to bring out one major release and one minor release every year ensuring future proofing of customer investments.