Every year, the Wireless Broadband Alliance recognizes and celebrates excellence from across the wireless ecosystem at the WBA Industry Awards.

The 2016 Awards took place during the Wireless Global Congress in San Jose on 16 November. In this series of blogs, we’re looking back the evening’s winners and taking a closer look at what led to them receiving their award.

In this edition, we’re looking at the award for Best Next Gen Wi-Fi Service Infrastructure, which was won by Affirmed Networks for its fully virtualized Wi-Fi Gateway.

Can you briefly describe Affirmed Networks’ Wi-Fi Gateway?

Affirmed Networks’ fully virtualized, ETSI-compliant Wi-Fi Gateway is built on top of its leading Mobile Content Cloud solution and is deployed on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and managed by commercial hypervisors. The Wi-Fi solution provides a Trusted WLAN Access Gateway/Proxy (TWAG/TWAP) for access to trusted Wi-Fi networks and an evolved Packet Data Gateway (ePDG) for secure access to untrusted Wi-Fi networks.

Affirmed’s virtual Wi-Fi solution enables mobile operators to fully extend LTE network coverage through trusted Wi-Fi hotspots, ensuring a consistent delivery of core network services across Wi-Fi networks, including quality of service, security, charging and authentication. Affirmed’s fully virtualized ePDG, was the first truly cloud native untrusted Wi-Fi gateway in the market. Its IPsec Encryption Capabilities were inspire on Intel software advances, including Intel® AES New Instructions (Intel® AES-NI) and the Intel® Multi-Buffer Crypto. Affirmed’s ePDG solution provides the same robust call experience as the trusted gateway, enabling seamless call hand-off for complete mobility between macrocellular and Wi-Fi networks.

In your opinion, what makes Affirmed Networks’ Wi-Fi Gateway stand out from other similar services?

Affirmed Wi-Fi Gateway is designed to provide the most robust, reliable and flexible solution on the market today. The solution stands out due to its comprehensive list of features:

  • Ultra-high performance and completely agnostic deployable on commercial off-the-shelf hardware and with open support for popular hypervisors from VMware, KVM and OpenStack.
  • A carrier-grade Wi-Fi solution fully compliant with ETSI NFV standards.
  • Easy integration with the Affirmed vEPC (virtual Evolve Packet Core) or any third-party EPC solutions.
  • A uniquely engineered virtual ePDG that delivers 5G levels of performance for high volumes of encrypted traffic
  • Seamless delivery of core network services including policy/charging, packet inspection, value-added service/content optimization and workflow orchestration.
  • Equipped with Affirmed Active Intelligent vProbe and Analytics Solution provides a real time collection of intelligent data records (iEDR) to monitor quality, capacity, sessions record, etc.
  • A wide range of vEPC functions inherited from Affirmed Mobile Content Core, such as GGSN, SAE-GW, SP/DPI/Heuristics application detection, PCEF with Gx and Gy interfaces for QoS and offline/online charging, lawful interception; as well as its rich set of content services, including HTTP(S) Proxy, web and video content optimization and adaptation, content caching, content filtering/parental control, subscriber firewall, NAT/ALG and more.

What are your thoughts on winning Best Next Gen Wi-Fi Infrastructure Network at the WBA Industry Awards?

Affirmed Networks is honored to be awarded as the “Best Next Gen Wi-Fi Infrastructure Network” by the WBA. Affirmed has a deep commitment to finding innovative solutions for fixed and mobile service providers as they evolve toward next generation architectures. As a leader in the NFV network evolution, and with a proven track of over forty worldwide deployments, Affirmed has been helping service providers build the next-generation of networks using carrier-class, natively virtualized solutions. With Wi-Fi becoming the wireless network of choice for many subscribers and a proven solution for coverage and monetization challenges of service providers, the introduction of our fully virtualized Wi-Fi gateway solution is aimed to lead the way of next generation Wi-Fi networks.

For more information about Affirmed Networks, visit the official website.