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The Critical Lowdown Podcast Episode 37

Managing and Running Networks with Open Networking


Big Network is a software company focused on tier 2 and tier 3 ISPs to help deliver resilient Internet access to their business class customers.
 
Here we review Big Network's Internet Reliability Gateway (IRG) with their CEO and Founder Tom Daly.
 
"Your critical business class customers need network availability and bandwidth, whether that's guest WiFi at their hotel, their store or business applications."
 
Big Network's suite of cloud-managed software, a portal and set of APIs allow you to describe the ideal network and deliver ultra high availability Internet for your business class customer. The software runs on cost-effective open networking hardware that delivers those services to the customer premise.

Define your network, define the carrier connections you want to use, and failover rules.


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Ciara McCarthy

Ciara McCarthy
CMO, EPS Global

Tom Daly

Tom Daly
CEO, Big Network


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Transcript of Podcast

 

Ciara: Tom, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell me about your role at Big Network?

Tom: Thanks, Ciara. I'm Tom Daly, CEO of Big Network. We're a 4 year old software company focused on helping Tier-2 and Tier-3 ISPs deliver resilient internet access to their business customers.

Ciara: Can you tell us more about Big Network?

Tom: Big Network is a software company with a clear mission: we help Tier-2 and Tier-3 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) deliver resilient connectivity to their business customers. To achieve this, we've developed a comprehensive solution.

First, we've built a suite of cloud-managed software. This includes a user-friendly portal and a series of APIs. These tools allow ISPs to design and describe the ideal network for their business customers.

Second, we've created software that runs on generic network hardware. This software is responsible for actually delivering the services to the customer's premises. By using generic hardware, we're able to keep costs down while still providing top-notch service.

You can think of Big Network's system as having two main components:.

  1. The Control Plane: This is like the brain of the operation. It helps ISPs define and manage the network they want to have. It's where all the planning and decision-making happens.
  2. The Data Plane: This is where the action happens. It's responsible for moving data packets through the network at the customer's location. It takes the plans from the control plane and puts them into action.

This two-part system allows us to offer a flexible, efficient, and resilient networking solution for ISPs and their business customers.

Ciara: That's a great overview, Tom, thanks for explaining Big Network's approach.

I'm curious about your product lineup. What would you consider your flagship product? And how does it stand out from other offerings in the market?

Tom: I'm really excited to talk about something we call IRG, which is our "Internet Reliability Gateway". We worked with a number of partners to bring IRG to life, all driven with the Big Network operating system sitting on top of it.

IRG is a universal CPE (Customer Premise Equipment), that sits out of business class customer site, think retail, restaurant, branch office. And we've tried to take what's traditionally three different pieces of equipment that might be sitting in the back rack and consolidate it down to one. And through that practice of taking three pieces of equipment and making them one, offering a lot more value to our customers.

Let me tell you a little bit about what that looks like. In IRG, we have a lot of connectivity in and out of this box.

Exceptional Connectivity:

  • We've packed IRG with a variety of ports: 1G and 2.5G Copper, 1G Fiber, and even fiber combo 1G and 10G ports.
  • This level of connectivity is remarkable for our price point.


Software Configurability:

  • All these connections are configurable through software.
  • As an ISP operator, you're not limited to one function or just a couple of ISPs.
  • You can feed this box with substantial bandwidth, and it handles it effortlessly.


Virtual SIM Technology:

  • We've integrated virtual SIM card technology, which is a game-changer for ISPs.
  • It allows for LTE primary or backup connectivity without the need for on-site surveys or physical SIM swaps.
  • This feature alone can save ISPs significant money by reducing the need for truck rolls.

In essence, IRG offers unparalleled flexibility, connectivity, and cost-saving potential for ISPs and their business customers.

Ciara: Yeah, it's amazingly convenient.

Tom: Virtual SIMs are truly remarkable. Here's how they work:

  1. Wake-up: The system activates and begins its process.
  2. Scan: It surveys the airwaves, checking signals from various carriers in the area.
  3. Connect: It latches onto the carrier providing the strongest signal.
  4. Phone Home: Once connected, it communicates with what we call a "SIM card dispatch center."
  5. Dynamic Assignment: The dispatch center then assigns a virtual SIM card for use that day.

This process happens automatically, ensuring the best possible connection without any physical SIM swapping or on-site visits.

If something goes wrong with that SIM card or something goes wrong with that carrier, no problem. IRG just throws that SIM card away virtually and then phones back home, re-scans the airwaves, looking for the next best possible carrier and dynamically checks out the next SIM card.

Ciara: Okay, a lot of fail-safes and resilience there.

Tom: This system is truly robust – it's like having multiple layers of backup. But what makes it even more impressive from a business perspective is the simplicity of the cellular plan. You only need to purchase a single plan, yet it gives you access to various carrier networks across the entire United States.

Your IRG can connect to as many different carriers as necessary throughout the month to maintain your connection. Despite all this flexibility, you're still only dealing with one plan and one bill. And here's the kicker – you're not forced to buy excess data you don't need just to ensure coverage. We're essentially providing enterprise-level reliability and flexibility with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of a single plan. It's about maximizing value while minimizing complexity for our customers.

Ciara: Yes, okay.

Tom: On top of the connectivity with Big Network, we have a full cloud managed suite of tools that allow you to manage the box as a fleet of these boxes. And then a really advanced multi-path networking engine that enables you to deliver a variety of use case driven scenarios to your customer premise, whether it's virtualized static IPs over any of the connections that are coming into the box - you can do very simple Layer-2 cross connects; basic SD-WAN functionality between locations, this is great for access control systems; private video surveillance; building management systems; business applications as well, voice over IP for example; and then we also have functionality that gives you remote access, particularly useful for the ISP community for out of band & remote diagnostic troubleshooting on these boxes. It's something that when you have sort of 3 separate boxes in the rack, it's really hard to obtain because you've got 3 panes of glass, 3 different systems. And we've said, look, this is just too much. Let's simplify. Let's make it one box, one pane of glass and deliver all that power to ISPs.

Ciara: What are the key features and benefits of this IRG product?

Tom: Let's look at this from an ISP's perspective. Our goal is to help Tier-2 and Tier-3 ISPs transform their services and increase their revenue. We're talking about taking a business-class service that might typically cost $100 or $120 a month and finding ways to turn it into a $200 a month offering.

We're providing that ISP with a really innovative platform, so that way they can start bundling services together. They can bundle in vSim data plans. They can look into sort of the competitive landscape that they're working in and maybe there's somebody that they might want to partner up with for additional circuits, additional capacity into their network to deliver to the customer site. But they can deliver that on top of IRG and take those third party network relationships and give them a first party feel for their customer base.

A bunch of our ISPs that we've piloted IRG with are saying to Big Network: "Hey, this Starlink thing that's out there, like what is that going to do to my business? Is Elon Musk's Starlink going to come along and evaporate what we built with putting fiber in the ground?" No! Take somebody like Starlink and instead of thinking of them as your competition, turn them into your cooperation and plug the Starlink into the IRG along with your fiber network or maybe your WISP network as yet another path out for that really critical business class customer that can't afford any downtime in the field. We're delivering value to ISPs in that regard.

Another thing in terms of features and benefits is stop rolling trucks. If you have a problem with a SIM card, no problem. The vSIM technology is there to help you out. And if you need visibility into what's going on during a network event, during an outage, all the paths in and out of IRG let you get that visibility so you can see what's happening with any carrier circuit that's landing on the box, even your own in real time and you get that built in backup plan for your network.

A lot of what our capability is, is just having a structured backup to backup to backup to backup!

Ciara: You're reducing truck rolls and then you're introducing potentially revenue streams for ISPs, that's 2 massive benefits there.

How does the IRG enable ultra high availability and how do you think that this will affect customer experience?

Tom: We think about network availability as a key deliverable in building a big network. We need bandwidth for everything in our lives every day, from simple things like guest Wi-Fi in your hotel or your restaurant. People are going to be really grouchy if that's not available.

Tom: In 2024, many business applications are designed to handle brief internet outages by switching to offline mode. But humans don't, right? So high availability internet really matters.

What we've done with IRG is we've gone beyond what many of the existing vendor solutions have done, which is just a simple "Hey, you have a primary and you have a backup circuit". We have clients that are running IRGs with 4 different ISPs coming into it because they have that ultimate need for high availability. Just given the mix of ports and the software configurability of how you're going to run those ports and what roles you're going to put them in. Now you can start to deliver a lot more connectivity. It doesn't have to be ultra premium, for example an MPLS from a Tier-1 carrier, it can be a bunch of, broadband business class circuits that you merge together and get that experience of ultra high availability, Tier-1 networking at a much better price point.

Ciara: That's amazing, Tom. Clearly, the price point is a crucial factor. Shifting gears a bit, I'm curious about the bigger picture.

What trends do you see shaping the future of open networking? And how is Big Network positioning itself to address these changes?

Tom: Open Networking is at a really important stage of the game. There's a growing frustration with vendor lock-in – you know, where you only get features when you activate a license, and you can't program the device yourself.

At Big Network, we've tackled this head-on. We've developed a full application programming interface, or API, that's open networking ready. This API allows you to configure Big Network devices and our powerful multipath engine. We call this system 'cloud networks.'

As an ISP operator, you can use our API to define your network, set failover rules, and specify carrier connections. This integration is vital because it allows your business systems to communicate directly with your service delivery systems, dramatically improving the customer experience.

Think about the old days of 'provisioning' – remember that? It meant someone shuffling between stacks of paper and computer screens, manually inputting data from order forms into OSS and BSS systems. That's not efficient in 2024. We're using software to automate these processes.

By exposing these APIs to the Big Network ecosystem, we're fully embracing the open networking community. It's about giving control back to the operators and making network management more efficient and flexible.

Ciara: What are you looking forward to most about working with EPS Global?

Tom: We're super excited in working with EPS Global because at our core, Big Network is a software company. We have an incredible team of software and network engineers who are constantly innovating to create solutions for our customers. And because of what we want to deliver to our customers, we have to work in the field of hardware. But it's not our core. Our strength lies in software engineering.

On the other hand, EPS is very, very good at hardware, and through the early days of our relationship, we've seen how members of the EPS ecosystem can work with Big Network as well. So we're really excited about EPS's hardware ecosystem that you bring to the table. IRG is one of the boxes that we're going to deploy on, maybe there's others that we can work on deploying on that come out of the EPS partner ecosystem.

The second thing is, is that Big Network is a small company, we're just a couple of years old. We're about a dozen people worldwide, but we're a small but mighty team. We've seen that there's a good, sympatrical relationship with EPS. You're excited about working with us - we're excited in working with you, it's not this small little company trying to talk to one of the giant distributors that are out there we're just going to get ignored, we've had a lot of attention from EPS so far. We're happy to reciprocate that, and we're super excited to be working with you.

Ciara: Brilliant. I'm looking forward to the working relationship as well. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me today.

Glossary of Terms

  • IRG (Internet Reliability Gateway): Big Network's flagship product, a universal CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) that consolidates multiple networking functions into one device.
  • CPE (Customer Premise Equipment): Hardware located at a customer's site that connects to the service provider's network.
  • Virtual SIM/vSIM: Technology that allows dynamic selection and use of cellular networks without physical SIM card swaps.
  • LTE: Long-Term Evolution, a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices.
  • SIM card dispatch center: A system that dynamically assigns virtual SIM cards to devices based on network availability and signal strength.
  • Multi-path networking engine: A system that manages multiple network connections simultaneously for increased reliability and performance.
  • SD-WAN: Software-Defined Wide Area Network, a technology that simplifies the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling the networking hardware from its control mechanism.
  • WISP: Wireless Internet Service Provider, a company that provides internet access through wireless network infrastructure.
  • MPLS: Multiprotocol Label Switching, a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one network node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses.
  • Open Networking: An approach to network architecture that emphasizes openness, programmability, and vendor-neutrality.
  • API (Application Programming Interface): A set of protocols and tools for building software applications, allowing different software components to communicate with each other.
  • OSS (Operations Support Systems): Computer systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage their networks.
  • BSS (Business Support Systems): The components that a telecommunications service provider uses to run its business operations towards customers.

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