F5 Networks, which specializes in layer 7 traffic management solutions, has enhanced its BIG-IP appliance to help mobile operators scale their authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) infrastructure, without incurring the costly and time-consuming process of replacing existing AAA servers. 
Existing AAA servers can become overloaded as mobile subscribers use more services. F5's solution helps service providers to protect services from unplanned outages and enables carriers to optimize traffic throughput on current AAA servers. Key capabilities of BIG-IP v10.1 include:
- Support for Diameter and RADIUS protocols -- New traffic profiles and monitors specifically for Diameter and RADIUS traffic allow service providers to take advantage of the benefits of layer 7 traffic management -- including load balancing, inspection, redirection, high availability, and simplified scaling -- for their AAA infrastructure.
- On-demand capacity to handle highest levels of traffic -- To help carriers manage massive volumes of revenue-generating traffic, F5 is introducing PB 200 blades for its VIPRION chassis. VIPRION and PB 200 blades provide the throughput needed today as well as a simple method for adding on-demand capacity to future-proof a carriers' infrastructure.
- Carrier-class availability with Fast Failover -- New failover methods use a combination of metrics to determine when to switch to the standby unit, and reduce the failover time to fractions of a second. Fast Failover, combined with new monitors and carrier-grade hardware, can significantly reduce downtime.
- Seamless strategy for staging network migration as IPv6 traffic grows -- The BIG-IP IPv6 Gateway feature ensures a carriers' ability to leverage the scalability of IPv6 for all their mobile devices, while still connecting to legacy IPv4 networks.
- Total traffic control with iRules -- F5's powerful event-driven programming language, iRules, allows system integrators to integrate BIG-IP into their total solution, providing advanced, customized traffic management, such as policy-based traffic steering.
