Increasing the performance and capacity of a M2M/IoT platform

Overview

Industry

Location

Telecom

Poland

Technology Used

Apache

Apache Kafka

CI/CD

Corosync

DRDB

Grafana

Helm-Charts

Ingress-Controller

Java

JWT

K8S Secrets

Kubernetes

MetalLB

MongoDB

NFS

Pacemaker

PostrgeSQL

Prometeus

Redis

Spring Boot

Thanos

VIP

Zabbix

Project overview

Software Mind realized fix-scope project included the preparation of a platform allowing end-users (self-care for B2B customers) to manage cards, services, and packages via GUI and API. A telco-core integration with the telecommunications network (Diameter, GGSN) was also implemented, allowing for session control of transfer limitations, provisioning, and dumping CDR/EDR for Mediation Zone purposes. Additionally, a solution for automatic service quality verification (pinger) was prepared, and integrations with location systems and notification/messaging systems were implemented.

Client background

A mobile network operator in Poland that is part of an international telecom group. Our client offers a wide range of services, including mobile phone, fixed line, and internet access. With over 12 million customers, our client is one of the largest mobile operators in Poland.

Business goals

To increase the performance and capacity of our client's M2M/IoT platform to sell more services for a larger number of cards and to offer additional quality control services in full scope. Additionally, to create self-care portals for both end-users and the B2B segment that empowers them to manage their services, monitor usage, and access relevant data independently. Finally, to implement the solution in a microservices architecture on K8s to ensure better scaling capabilities and easier scaling in the future. The overarching goal was to introduce a high-availability and geo-redundant architecture that guarantees continuous service operation and minimizes downtime, even in the event of regional outages or failures.

Results

A comprehensive high-performance M2M/IoT platform

Featuring GUI-based SIM card management, usage control and monitoring and reporting capabilities.

Seamless unification with telecommunications layers

Integrating Diameter (Gy/Ro) for increased data consumption and session control (scaled to 40k requests per second) and MZ module for EDR/CDR file generation, which has enabled the creation of 50k EDR files and 20k CDR files per minute).

Efficient integration with business layers

Deploying a data warehousing ELK-based interface that processes 300k messages per minute and a data warehousing Kafka-based interface that processes 700k messages per minute, which increased the platform’s operational capacity and enabled the client to expand their IoT/M2M offerings with value-added services related to guaranteed SLAs and confirmation of meeting defined measures and KPIs.

Increased scalability

Implementing a microservices architecture (Kubernetes) to enable significantly greater performance and capacity to support 10M SIMs, 60k org units and high message/request throughput.

Improved processing capabilities

Boosting performance of the Redis memory database to process up to 120k requests per second and the MongoDB document database to process up to 20k requests per second by tuning internal components.