Enhance the data flows in your telecom network
Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer (vLB) is a fully virtualized software-based load balancer that optimizes distribution of IP traffic across multiple application servers based on configurable load, availability, and policy. In short, the key advantages of Enea Virtual Load Balancer are:
- Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by eliminating the need for proprietary hardware.
- Faster deployment and scaling through automation and a stateless architecture.
- High-performance traffic steering tailored for cloud-native and hybrid environments.
Scale Smarter with Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer. Built for 5G Scale and Cloud-Native Agility.
As data traffic in mobile and fixed networks skyrockets—driven by ever-growing use of video streaming, cloud gaming, and mobile apps—Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and Communication Service Providers (CSPs) must scale beyond the terabit-per-second (Tbps) threshold across hundreds of instances.
Traditional load balancing solutions struggle to keep up. Modern 5G and fixed data networks require selective traffic distribution, intelligent protocol management, packet forwarding stickiness, and seamless horizontal scalability to ensure high-performance service delivery at scale.
Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer is built for this challenge. Deployable as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) on cost-efficient commodity hardware, it dynamically distributes IP traffic across multiple application servers based on real-time load, availability, and policy-driven rules—ensuring optimal performance and reliability. Unlike traditional appliance-based load balancers and ADCs, Enea’s software-based solution offers unmatched performance, effortless scalability, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO)—all with flexible deployment options tailored for modern telecom environments.
Upgrade your network infrastructure with Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer. Scaling up to handle data traffic shouldn’t slow you down.
Traditional Load Balancer in a Mobile Network
2N redundancy : Higher license cost
Enea Virtual Load Balancer in a Mobile Network
N+1 redundancy : Load balancing responsive to demand : Reduced TCO
The Growing Need for Scalable Load Balancers
Mobile network traffic is growing at an unprecedented pace. Operators face mounting pressure to efficiently distribute this traffic across increasingly complex network infrastructures. Legacy load balancers struggle to keep up, leading to performance bottlenecks and higher operational costs.
Why Traditional Load Balancers Fall Short
The transition to 5G and cloud-native architectures has exposed the shortcomings of traditional load balancers. Hardware-based appliances, originally designed to optimize traffic for web applications, now struggle to handle the scale and elasticity required in modern telecom networks. Expanding capacity means purchasing and configuring additional hardware, leading to high costs and operational complexity.
In contrast, virtual load balancers (vLBs) are designed for the dynamic nature of 5G. They eliminate rigid scalability limits, simplify deployment, and provide seamless automation for intelligent traffic distribution. By removing the need for proprietary hardware, they allow network operators to scale flexibly across standard compute infrastructure.
How Enea vLB Solves the Load Balancing Challenge
Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer provides a cloud-native solution that solves the challenges traditional appliances face in handling modern network traffic demands. Let’s explore the core capabilities that make Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer the ideal solution for next-generation telecom networks.
Seamless Horizontal Scalability
Traditional load balancing solutions require complex configurations when expanding capacity, often involving additional hardware purchases. Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer removes these constraints. Its stateless design allows operators to scale horizontally—simply add new instances, and they will integrate automatically into existing routing tables without manual configuration or downtime. This approach ensures immediate capacity expansion with minimal operational overhead.
Carrier-Grade Throughput for High-Volume Traffic
With the explosion of data traffic in 5G networks, handling terabit-scale traffic becomes a necessity. Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer can support up to 200 Gbps per instance on standard x86 hardware, providing the throughput necessary to meet the demands of modern telecom networks. This makes it an ideal choice for MNOs and ISPs looking to scale to handle increasing data loads.
Dynamic Session Stickiness
A major challenge in load balancing is ensuring consistent routing for user sessions. Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer addresses this with its dynamic session stickiness feature. By intelligently determining the best application server for each incoming packet, Virtual Load Balancer guarantees that all packets in a session are routed to the same server. If a server becomes unavailable, the system automatically selects another server to handle incoming traffic, ensuring uninterrupted service.
Simplified Network Operations with Smart IP Routing
Managing a network with multiple server IP addresses can add complexity and increase the chance of errors. Enea’s Smart IP feature reduces this complexity by exposing a single IP address for all routing operations. This eliminates the need for frequent routing updates, reducing network configuration overhead and streamlining operations.
Optimized Traffic Distribution
Intelligent traffic distribution is essential for maximizing network performance and ensuring reliability. Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer (vLB) supports multiple application pools within a single instance, enabling traffic to be routed according to predefined policies such as source IP, protocol type, or application. This approach ensures efficient traffic management, prevents congestion, and maximizes throughput. By allowing operators to define multiple application pools—each with its own set of routing rules—the Virtual Load Balancer offers granular control over traffic flows, helping to optimize network resources and maintain high service levels.
Real-Time Health Monitoring for Proactive Management
Ensuring uptime and availability in modern networks requires continuous monitoring. Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer comes with built-in health monitoring, providing real-time insights into the performance of application servers. If a server becomes unresponsive, the system can immediately reroute traffic to healthy instances, ensuring uninterrupted service and minimizing downtime.
Future-Proof Deployment Options
Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer is designed to evolve with the demands of modern networks. It can be deployed as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) on platforms like KVM, VMware, and OpenStack, providing operators with flexibility and choice. In the near future, containerized deployment options will further enhance agility, allowing operators to seamlessly integrate load balancing into their cloud-native 5G core networks.
Unlike traditional licensing models that require operators to purchase fixed capacity in advance, Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer offers a flexible, pay-as-you-grow model. This reduces upfront costs and allows CSPs to expand their capacity on demand, ensuring that they only pay for what they use.
The Future of Load Balancing: Virtual and Containerized
As Mobile Network Operators accelerate the deployment of 5G networks, the need for agile, scalable load balancing solutions has never been more critical. Virtual load balancers, like Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer, provide the flexibility and scalability needed to meet growing traffic demands. The shift to containerized deployments is the next step in this evolution, ensuring that operators can scale efficiently while maintaining high performance.
Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer is at the forefront of this transformation, offering a fully virtualized, future-proof solution that helps Mobile Network Operators and CSPs navigate the complexities of modern telecom networks. With its intelligent traffic distribution, seamless scalability, and low TCO, Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer is ready to support the next generation of network infrastructure.
Want to learn how Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer can transform your network?
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An exclusive report from leading industry analyst Stéphane Téral examines the pitfalls of traditional mobile core application load balancers. It explains how the Enea’s Virtual Load Balancer with its “Smart IP” feature simplifies routing and helps avoid the trade-off between horizontal scalability and stickiness.
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Enea’s traffic management capabilities provide the technological foundation needed to fulfill our ‘subscribe once, source from many, pay for what you use’ model, which is radically transforming how consumers experience mobile services across our LATAM operations.
Naorus Abdulghani
Group Chief Technology Officer
Beyond ONE -
Enea’s technology allows us to effectively manage all our streaming data, including encrypted video, resulting in a very positive impact on subscriber QoE
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TELUS is proud to partner with Enea and give our customers a better experience while watching videos
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The innovative solution from Enea has been impressive. They have demonstrated their expertise and backed it up with excellent levels of service
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Secure Traffic Manager and RAN Congestion Manager effectively manage encrypted and non-encrypted traffic, reduce RAN congestion and improve subscribers’ quality of experience.
Virtual Load Balancer Frequently Asked Questions
Loadbalancing is the physical distribution of IP traffic between services (proxies or servers) for processing in large scale telecom and internet environments; traditionally the function of physical boxes traffic can be processed and distributed on different load sharing algorithms e.g. round-round, least-busy etc. Virtual Load balancing is moving the distribution decision to software only components running on a variety of hardware choices in virtualized or containerized environments.
yes, the answer is 3 fold: Technical, TCO, Flexibility
Technical – with the improvements in virtualization platform and capability – the ability to virtualize key load balancing functions n standard hardware is a reality; Older physical load balancers also have capabilities which have grown over a long time and are not needed (i.e. layer 7 services)- so it is a chance for the key load balancing functions only to be isolated and separated out.
TCO – with physical box-based load balancers you have to buy TWO of everything ,for redundancy; this pushes up cost as ,you are licensing 2X the capacity required. This, combined with bloated functionality not relevant to load balancing pushes up their cost. Focussing on pure load balancing capability with N_+1 redundancy means the costs can be kept down while scaling up for traffic demands.
Flexibility – a software based approach means you can spin up new load balancing capability quickly and put it where it is needed (data centre, hybrid cloud, edge); the self-rebalancing capability provided by Enea makes it easier to scale up and out to where the IP data traffic is – instead of needeless backhaul.
Static and dynamic routing options
Supports BGP, ECMP as well as a single interface using an 802.3ad LACP-compliant switch.
Selective VRF-based packet forwarding
Maintain multiple routing tables on the same load balancer deployment, supporting isolation among different virtual router instances without the overhead of adding additional physical instance.
Protocol-based steering
Steering decisions can be made based on IP, UDP & TCP protocols and subscriber traffic to guarantee that application servers or network nodes only receive specific, relevant traffic flows.
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Would you like to know more about Enea’s software solutions for Network Traffic Management? Interested in discovering how our features could improve your specific use cases? Contact us to arrange a meeting with our network performance experts!