How One of the Biggest ISPs in India Achieved DoT Compliance with Trisul IPDR: A Success Story

How One of the Biggest ISPs in India Achieved DoT Compliance with Trisul IPDR: A Success Story

Executive Summary

A leading Indian Internet Service Provider (ISP) with over 20 million customers faced significant challenges in complying with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) regulations. The ISP required a comprehensive solution to collect, store, and manage IPDR and NAT logs. Trisul IPDR was deployed to address these challenges, providing a scalable and easy-to-use solution. As a result, the ISP reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction, and ensured seamless compliance with DoT regulations.

Background

The ISP catered to a vast and diverse user base across India, with over 20 million residential and business customers. To comply with DoT regulations, the ISP needed to collect and store specific internet session data, including IPDR parameters and NAT logs.

Challenges

To better understand the complexities of network log data management, let’s examine the key challenges the ISP faced. This analysis will help pinpoint areas for optimization and improvement in your own operational infrastructure.

Manual Log Management

The ISP previously relied on storing log files in tables and flat files, which made querying a cumbersome process. Retrieving specific data required manually grepping through massive amounts of data (gigabytes) that took hours to complete. Moreover, combining log data with AAA records involved labor-intensive manual work. Manual handling errors could lead to loss of IPDR logs and non-compliance penalties.

Challenges with Manual Log Management Illustration

Integration with AAA Records

The organization faced a significant challenge in combining log data with AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting) records, which was a manual process prone to errors and delays. This led to inefficiencies, scalability issues, and security risks, as well as delayed or inaccurate analysis.
Challenges with Integration with AAA Records Illustration

NAT and CGNAT Correlation

Picture this: a large-scale ISP, heavily reliant on NAT and CGNAT. Now, imagine trying to make sense of it all – correlating private IPs with flow logs, that is. Sounds like a daunting task, right? Well, that’s exactly what our customer faced… until they found a simple yet powerful solution: directing CGNAT Flow Translation NetFlow logs from the LSN (Large Scale NAT) router straight to Trisul, enabling automatic correlation of the private IPs with the flow logs.

Challenges with NAT and CGNAT Correlation Illustration

Sheer Size of the Log Database

This particular ISP was doing 2-3Tbps traffic.  Their existing solution was not scalable and can’t handle the sheer volume of IPDR and AAA flow records and queries, leading to performance issues, frustrating delays, and a subpar user experience.

Challenges with Scalability Illustration

Requirements

To address these challenges, the ISP required a solution that could:

  1. Ensure full compliance with DoT regulations
  2. Collect NetFlow data from 30 gateway routers
  3. Integrate with existing AAA and NAT systems
  4. Provide High Availability (HA) mode to ensure uninterrupted service by automatically switching to a redundant system in case of failures, minimizing downtime and data loss.
  5. Offer secure Tape Backup for long-term data retention, protect against data loss due to hardware failures or natural disasters

Solution

Trisul IPDR was deployed to address the ISP’s challenges. Trisul IPDR provided a comprehensive solution for collecting, storing, and managing IPDR and NAT logs. With Trisul IPDR, the ISP can

  • Collect and store all required IPDR parameters and NAT logs in a single, comprehensive database
  • Use Trisul extremely large fault tolerant database model to solve the problem. Our database growth rate is 800GB/day here.
  • Designed a Tiered storage architecture with a combination of SSD NVMe, SAS 10K, and a SAN.
  • Designed a Tape Archive Solution for additional backups
  • Simplify log management and reduce the risk of errors or non-compliance
  • Ensure full compliance with DoT regulations
  • Collect NetFlow data from multiple vendors, including Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, and A10
  • Rapidly respond to user queries in under 20 seconds
  • Support Tape backup for secure data storage
  • NAT, Syslog, and AAA integration for comprehensive network visibility and user tracking
  • Pull in NAT and User-ID information for enhanced analytics, reporting, and auditing purpose
  • Scalable architecture to support growing network demands and traffic volumes

Benefits

Trisul IPDR Solution has delivered proven results for the ISP, driving operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and full DoT Compliance. Let’s discover the key benefits that have transformed their business operations.

70% Reduced Costs

Trisul IPDR helped the ISP reduce costs associated with compliance, log management, and storage. Our tiered disk and tape architecture along with advanced compression techniques have reduced the platform costs.

4x Reduced Manpower

With Trisul IPDR, the ISP has significantly streamlined its operations. The company now requires only a quarter of the original manpower to manage logs. Moreover, the response time to queries has drastically improved, with answers provided within minutes to hours, rather than days.

Seamless Compliance

Trisul IPDR ensures seamless compliance with DoT regulations, reducing the risk of penalties or reputational damage.

Conclusion

Trisul IPDR has helped the ISP simplify DoT compliance, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. With its scalable architecture and comprehensive feature set, Trisul IPDR is an ideal solution for ISPs seeking to address complex compliance and log management challenges.

Leave the complexity to us!

Experience Effortless IPDR Compliance with Trisul

Our Solution will handle the compliance and log management, so you can focus on what you do best- running your business. Get started today!

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