Bridgewater Systems has unbundled its suite of products, which focus on revenue and cost control for service providers in the IP data services marketplace. The company also today introduced a new product in the suite, IP Address Manager, which provides service providers with session-based IP address management.
"By offering a suite of individual products, our customers can incrementally deploy the functionality that will meet the needs of their customers today - and in the future - as their businesses grow and evolve,” says Derek Smyth, president and CEO of Bridgewater Systems. “In addition, even if they already have AAA systems deployed, our highly functional products provide added value in a number of areas."
The software suite, formerly bundled in with Bridgewater's AAA product and packaged as WideSpan and NetProfile Carrier Edition, is now available as individual modules. Products can be purchased separately and operate independently or in conjunction with others in the suite. Bridgewater products include:
· AAA Service Controller provides authentication, authorization and account management for user access to dial-up ISP, wireless data and DSL networks.
· IP Address Manager, the new product, manages, assigns and reclaims IP addresses required by dial, DSL and mobile sessions, reducing the number of IP addresses required and centralizing management.
· Revenue Collector produces user session records for rating, billing and clearing systems ensuring all revenues are collected and reducing accounting data volume by a factor of five.
· Revenue Formatter filters, formats and streams user session records to the appropriate external billing system ensuring consistency and accuracy of records.
· Port Quota Controller allows service providers to dedicate a specific number of logical ports to each customer, avoiding customer monopolization of network resources.
· User Session Controller prevents multiple sessions against a single account to prevent account sharing and fraud.
· Content Access Controller allows services providers to offer Web content access programs to customers, either by subscription or pay-as-you-go.
· Session Terminator allows service providers to program user session disconnect on demand, based on a variety of reasons giving service providers control over abusive users.
