Intelligent Data Plane Control & Policy Enforcement for MVNOs.การควบคุม Data Plane อย่างชาญฉลาด และบังคับใช้ Policy สำหรับ MVNO

The PCEF is the central enforcement point for every subscriber session on the data plane. It intercepts and inspects data flows — applying operator-defined rules for charging, QoS shaping, traffic steering and fair-use controls — all in real time, at the network edge.

Cipher Telecom's PCEF deploys as a virtualized network function (VNF) on commodity x86 infrastructure. It evaluates bearer-level policy decisions in sub-millisecond latency, using rule sets pushed from the PCRF via the Gx interface. Every subscriber session is managed individually — no shared policy bleed between customers.

Key enforcement capabilities

• Dynamic rule binding — PCC (Policy and Charging Control) rules are downloaded per bearer, per session, from the PCRF.
• Volume quota tracking — real-time per-subscriber data consumption metered against purchased bundles.
• Traffic steering — route selected application flows (e.g. video, VoIP) over preferred paths or dedicated slices.
• Zero-rating — exempt specified destination IP ranges from quota deduction (partner content, free-data campaigns).
• Fair-use policy execution — automatically throttle subscribers who exceed fair-use thresholds without requiring manual intervention.

DPI is integrated at the data-plane edge, co-located with the PCEF. It classifies every flow at Layer 7 — identifying applications, protocols and content categories in real time — without requiring the MVNO to maintain custom signatures manually.

Application-aware traffic management

• Application detection — classifies streaming, social, gaming, VoIP, P2P and thousands of specific applications from a continuously updated signature database.
• Zero-rating application routing — after classification, identified flows are marked and handed to the PCEF for zero-rating or preferential treatment.
• Parental-control and content filtering hooks — DPI verdicts feed downstream filtering policies without requiring separate inline appliances.
• Usage analytics export — per-subscriber, per-application byte counters exported to the MVNO's analytics stack via IPFIX / NetFlow v9.

The Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) — or its 5G equivalent, the PCF — orchestrates the rule sets that the PCEF enforces. When a subscriber's usage crosses a threshold, when a promotion activates, or when a bearer is established, the PCRF reacts in milliseconds, pushing updated rules over Gx.

Dynamic QoS and bandwidth control

• QCI / 5QI class assignment — assign Quality of Service Class Identifiers per application category or per customer tier.
• Bandwidth throttling — enforce MBR (Maximum Bit Rate) and GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) per APN or per service profile.
• Specialized data bundles — product managers configure add-on data packs, roaming rules and time-of-day policies from the control plane without a code change.
• Interworking with OCS — PCRF communicates with the Online Charging System over Gx / Gy for unified charging and policy control.

The Gi interface (4G) / SGi interface (LTE-A / 5G-NSA) is the boundary between the MVNO's packet core and the public internet. Our platform manages high-capacity IP pools and performs Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) to translate private subscriber IP addresses into routable public internet addresses.

CGNAT supports both Port Address Translation (PAT) and full-cone NAT modes, with per-subscriber port block allocation for lawful-intercept compliance. NAT mapping logs are exportable for LEA handover.