Frequently asked questions.

The benefits are manifold:

• Reduction in latency and packet loss. This appears across many deployments. Cajun Broadband achieved latencies below 10 ms and losses under 1%. InfoWest now consistently sees latencies between 15 ms and 28 ms, with losses below 0.4% — an 80% reduction.
• Fewer support calls. Bequant’s QoE improvements reduce the volume of customer support interactions. Resound Networks reports a 35% drop in calls related to network issues. Arbuckle has also seen a measurable decrease after deploying the solution.
• Congestion mitigation during peak hours. Bequant’s traffic optimization and application-aware policies help operators mitigate the effects of network congestion — whether in the network core or at the subscriber’s access link. La Harpe Telephone used Bequant to successfully manage traffic surges during special events. DigitalC is another example, resolving capacity constraints in one of their service areas.
• Opportunity to increase subscriber counts or plan speeds without degrading QoE. In some cases, the QoE gains can be reinvested to grow the subscriber base or raise plan speeds while maintaining service quality, avoiding the cost of a capacity upgrade. Arbuckle is a clear case: they were able to double the speed of some of their plans.

The financial return on investment (ROI) with Bequant is driven by key commercial and operational advantages: superior Quality of Experience (QoE) strengthens market reputation to accelerate subscriber acquisition while significantly reducing churn, while fewer support tickets and lower truck rolls directly cut operating expenses (OpEx) to deliver an immediate, positive impact on the ISP’s P&L.

Furthermore, Bequant’s DPI-based application shaping enables ISPs to save up to 20% on bandwidth. This directly reduces IP transit costs while unlocking existing network capacity, allowing providers to onboard new subscribers using their current infrastructure and deferring future CapEx investments.

As a result of these combined efficiency gains and cost reductions, Bequant ISP customers consistently achieve an ROI exceeding 30% starting from their very first month of operation.

ISPs sell Internet access, so the customer experience while using that service is central to why subscribers signed up and why they stay. With a traffic optimization product such as Bequant, network quality of experience becomes better and more consistent, reducing the events that can trigger dissatisfaction and, eventually, churn to a competitor.

Assessing churn risk requires customer-interaction data, such as previous complaints, but one key input is the customer’s quality of experience while using the network. With a product like Bequant, an ISP has the metrics needed to understand QoE and act proactively to solve quality issues before they trigger churn. Network visibility not only identifies churn risk from a network-quality perspective; it also gives the ISP the evidence needed to act before the customer complains.

See how Bequant can help reading the brief Reducing Customer Churn through Network KPIs.

From the subscriber’s perspective, good quality of experience means responsive gaming, stable teleconferences and VoIP calls, video streaming without stalling, fast downloads, and a network that performs consistently for the most common applications. From a business perspective, good quality of experience is the level of network performance that keeps customers satisfied, differentiates the ISP from competitors, and requires only a reasonable investment in network infrastructure. Bequant helps ISPs achieve those goals. Many real examples can be found in our Case Studies section.

A mid-size ISP can reduce customer support costs by improving network performance with a traffic optimization product like Bequant. Better network quality reduces the events that trigger calls to the support center or, worse, technician truck rolls to the customer premises. One real example is Resound Networks, which reported a 35% drop in customer calls related to network issues after deploying Bequant.

NPS scores are closely tied to subscriber satisfaction, and from a network perspective, quality of experience while using the service is what matters most. Improving network QoE with a traffic optimization product like Bequant is often the most straightforward and cost-effective way to improve customer satisfaction, especially compared with adding capacity where no capacity bottleneck exists or where other factors, such as in-home Wi-Fi limitations, are the real constraint. One example of home-network limitations and how Bequant can help is explained in the brief Solving the In-Home Wi-Fi Challenge in FTTH Networks.

The Bequant BQN Platform is a traffic optimization product that improves subscriber QoE by reducing latency, packet loss and congestion. It also provides visibility by subscriber, subscriber group and application.

The main differences between Bequant and open-source QoS/router-based solutions are:

• TCP optimization accelerates TCP traffic and provides the rest of the Bequant features with accurate metrics for loss, latency and congestion.
• AI-based congestion mitigation per individual subscriber.
• AQM with per-flow queues and TCP-native speed control, for maximum latency isolation and minimum packet drops.
• Up to 400 Gbps of throughput capacity per server.
• Clustering of several Bequant servers for seamless management.

Open-source QoS and router-based solutions typically:

• Do not have TCP optimization.
• Do not have AI-based congestion mitigation.
• Their AQM does not have per-flow queues; instead, flows share the same queue based on classification, and TCP-native speed control is absent because senders are slowed down by dropping packets.
• Capacity is typically below 100 Gbps per device.
• Do not support clustering.

The main differences between Bequant and Preseem are:

• TCP optimization accelerates TCP traffic and provides the rest of the Bequant features with accurate metrics for loss, latency and congestion. Preseem has no TCP optimization.
• Application awareness thanks to DPI. Preseem has no DPI feature.
• AQM with TCP-native speed control. Preseem AQM does not have TCP-native speed control and senders are slowed down by dropping packets.
• Up to 400 Gbps of throughput capacity per server. Preseem’s maximum capacity is 100 Gbps.
• Clustering several Bequant servers enables seamless management. Preseem has no clustering feature.

The most important evaluation criteria are:

• Active traffic optimization: the solution should improve network performance without manual intervention through TCP optimization, AI-driven congestion mitigation, active queue management and application-aware traffic prioritization.
• Network visibility: the solution should provide proactive insight into network behavior at multiple levels, including per-subscriber, per-subscriber-group, per-application and network-wide performance metrics.
• Scalability: the solution must scale with ISP traffic growth both vertically, through higher performance per server, and horizontally, by adding servers to a centrally managed cluster.
• Reliability: the solution should have a proven record of successful deployments with ISPs of similar size, technology and operational complexity.
• Deployment and integration: the solution should fit the existing network architecture with minimal router changes and integrate cleanly with RADIUS, billing systems, and operational workflows.
• Manageability: the solution should require little or no fine-tuning after deployment, and server clustering should allow occasional configuration changes to be made once and propagated across the cluster.
• Price: pricing should be proportional to the value delivered, including capacity savings, lower support workload, improved QoE and reduced churn risk.

Yes. For many small and mid-size ISPs, a dedicated traffic optimization platform is worth the investment. The investment is easiest to justify when the ISP can connect the traffic optimization platform to measurable outcomes such as avoided capacity expansion, fewer support calls, lower churn risk, improved QoE, higher plan speeds or the ability to serve more subscribers with the same infrastructure. In that sense, the platform should be evaluated not as an extra network cost, but as a way to protect margins while improving customer experience.

The strongest business case is usually better use of existing infrastructure. If congestion, latency, packet loss or overloaded access links are limiting the customer experience, a platform such as Bequant can improve it without requiring large router upgrades or manual per-device tuning.

For smaller teams, the operational value is also important. A centralized platform can simplify subscriber policy enforcement, integrate with RADIUS or billing systems, reduce manual queue configuration and give support teams subscriber-level visibility. That means fewer recurring troubleshooting cycles and faster identification of problems before customers complain.

The Bequant BQN Platform is deployed as an inline element on standard Intel or AMD servers. It is placed where it can see and manage subscriber traffic, usually between the subscriber access network and the upstream/core network.

It does not require replacing the ISP’s existing routers or redesigning the network architecture. In most deployments, Bequant complements the existing router infrastructure by offloading traffic optimization, subscriber policy enforcement and analytics from routers to a dedicated platform. This allows routers to focus on routing while BQN handles TCP optimization, active queue management, congestion mitigation, DPI-based policies and subscriber-level visibility.

The main network changes are normally limited to inserting the BQN server or cluster into the traffic path and integrating it with existing operational systems such as RADIUS and billing platforms when subscriber-specific policies are required. For multi-site or higher-capacity networks, multiple BQN servers can be clustered and centrally managed.

Bequant integrates with existing billing and subscriber management systems by importing subscriber-plan information and using it to enforce per-subscriber traffic policies automatically.

The BQN Platform can receive subscriber data through RADIUS signaling, direct interaction with supported billing systems, or the Bequant REST API. This allows the platform to map each subscriber to the correct service plan without requiring engineers to configure queues manually on routers.

Bequant already supports integrations with multiple ISP billing platforms — currently 20 vendors and growing — including systems such as Powercode, Sonar, Splynx, UISP, Wisphub, Wispro and others.

Bequant is licensed per server, with a monthly subscription based on the peak throughput processed. The subscription includes the right to use the software and access to support. Pricing is independent of the number of registered or concurrent subscribers.

Bequant has been in business for more than a decade and has been deployed successfully in more than 400 networks. We are a product company, 100% focused on improving our BQN traffic optimization platform and supporting our customers’ needs.

ISP customers describe Bequant as valuable because it improves real network performance, gives them better operational visibility and helps them get more from existing infrastructure.

In real deployments, customers report measurable gains such as lower latency, reduced packet loss and retransmissions, fewer support calls and better service consistency during peak traffic periods. For example, Cajun Broadband reported latency improvements and packet loss below 1%, InfoWest reported an 80% reduction in packet retransmissions, and Resound Networks reported a 35% drop in support calls related to network issues.

More customer examples can be found in Case Studies and Resound video testimonial.

The BQN Platform can support networks from small and mid-size ISPs to large multi-site operators. It runs on standard Intel or AMD servers and can scale both vertically and horizontally.

For throughput, a single BQN server can process up to 400 Gbps, depending on the hardware configuration and deployment requirements. When more capacity or geographic distribution is needed, multiple BQN servers can be deployed as a centrally managed cluster. This allows an ISP to expand capacity by adding servers while keeping policy management, analytics and traffic optimization consistent across the network.

Bequant uses DPI and subscriber-level data to make traffic management more precise while protecting customer privacy.

DPI is used to identify application categories and traffic behavior so the BQN Platform can apply application-aware policies. Subscriber-level data is used to map traffic to the correct service plan, enforce per-subscriber policies, identify congestion symptoms and help support teams troubleshoot performance issues faster.

From a privacy perspective, the platform stores only two pieces of information that require protection, and both are encrypted: the subscriber IP address and the subscriber identifier. Access to subscriber-level views is limited to authorized operational teams.

The BQN Platform is Bequant’s traffic optimization and network visibility platform for ISPs and mobile operators. It helps operators improve subscriber quality of experience by reducing congestion, latency, packet loss and retransmissions, while also giving network and support teams better visibility into subscriber, application and network-level performance.

For ISPs and mobile operators, the main problems it solves are overloaded access links, inconsistent customer experience during peak hours, complex subscriber policy enforcement, limited router scalability and slow troubleshooting. BQN addresses these issues with TCP optimization, active queue management, AI-based congestion mitigation, DPI-enabled application awareness and per-subscriber policy enforcement.

In practice, this helps operators get more value from existing infrastructure, delay unnecessary capacity upgrades, reduce support workload and deliver a more consistent service to subscribers.

Bequant detects network congestion and manages the network capacity while improving the subscriber quality of experience. Keeping QoE constant, the network can accommodate more subscribers. Anibal Enríquez, CEO of Communicate, has reported 10% more users per Access Point.

Keeping the number of subscribers constant, the subscriber QoE is improved by reducing the network latency and losses. Cajun Networks has reported 83% reduction in latency and retransmissions going down from a high of 6,6% to an average of 0.32%.

Bequant traffic AI congestion mitigation (ACM) mitigates the congestion, active queue management (AQM) enforces rate limits in an optimal way and application-based traffic policies (DPI enabled) moderate the demand of heavy applications during peak hours.

More information can be found on Cajun Case study and Enhanced Subscriber QoE.

It helps by providing key insights into how the subscriber is using the Internet connection. For example, using a DPI enabled product such as Bequant, a technical support team can see what applications are being used at the home network and realize that the reported problem is related to that usage, for example to a big download in combination with streaming sessions by several members of the family.

Improving network performance reduces churn and support costs by removing many of the problems that make subscribers dissatisfied and trigger support calls: high latency, packet loss, congestion, buffering, unstable video calls and inconsistent speeds during peak hours.

For churn, better performance means subscribers experience the service they expected more consistently. When gaming is responsive, video streams do not stall, calls remain stable and downloads complete at expected speeds, customers have fewer reasons to complain or switch providers. Bequant helps by reducing congestion, latency and packet loss while giving ISPs visibility into subscriber-level QoE before problems become churn risks.

For support costs, better performance lowers the number of tickets caused by network-quality issues. It also gives support and network teams clearer data when problems do occur, so they can identify the cause. That reduces repeat calls, escalations and unnecessary truck rolls.

The benefits are manifold:

• Reduction in latency and packet loss. This appears across many deployments. Cajun Broadband achieved latencies below 10 ms and losses under 1%. InfoWest now consistently sees latencies between 15 ms and 28 ms, with losses below 0.4% — an 80% reduction.
• Fewer support calls. Bequant’s QoE improvements reduce the volume of customer support interactions. Resound Networks reports a 35% drop in calls related to network issues. Arbuckle has also seen a measurable decrease after deploying the solution.
• Congestion mitigation during peak hours. Bequant’s traffic optimization and application-aware policies help operators mitigate the effects of network congestion — whether in the network core or at the subscriber’s access link. La Harpe Telephone used Bequant to successfully manage traffic surges during special events. DigitalC is another example, resolving capacity constraints in one of their service areas.
• Opportunity to increase subscriber counts or plan speeds without degrading QoE. In some cases, the QoE gains can be reinvested to grow the subscriber base or raise plan speeds while maintaining service quality, avoiding the cost of a capacity upgrade. Arbuckle is a clear case: they were able to double the speed of some of their plans.

The main differences between Bequant and Preseem are:

• TCP optimization accelerates TCP traffic and provides the rest of the Bequant features with accurate metrics for loss, latency and congestion. Preseem has no TCP optimization.
• Application awareness thanks to DPI. Preseem has no DPI feature.
• AQM with TCP-native speed control. Preseem AQM does not have TCP-native speed control and senders are slowed down by dropping packets.
• Up to 400 Gbps of throughput capacity per server. Preseem’s maximum capacity is 100 Gbps.
• Clustering several Bequant servers enables seamless management. Preseem has no clustering feature.

The Bequant BQN Platform is deployed as an inline element on standard Intel or AMD servers. It is placed where it can see and manage subscriber traffic, usually between the subscriber access network and the upstream/core network.

It does not require replacing the ISP’s existing routers or redesigning the network architecture. In most deployments, Bequant complements the existing router infrastructure by offloading traffic optimization, subscriber policy enforcement and analytics from routers to a dedicated platform. This allows routers to focus on routing while BQN handles TCP optimization, active queue management, congestion mitigation, DPI-based policies and subscriber-level visibility.

The main network changes are normally limited to inserting the BQN server or cluster into the traffic path and integrating it with existing operational systems such as RADIUS and billing platforms when subscriber-specific policies are required. For multi-site or higher-capacity networks, multiple BQN servers can be clustered and centrally managed.

Bequant integrates with existing billing and subscriber management systems by importing subscriber-plan information and using it to enforce per-subscriber traffic policies automatically.

The BQN Platform can receive subscriber data through RADIUS signaling, direct interaction with supported billing systems, or the Bequant REST API. This allows the platform to map each subscriber to the correct service plan without requiring engineers to configure queues manually on routers.

Bequant already supports integrations with multiple ISP billing platforms — currently 20 vendors and growing — including systems such as Powercode, Sonar, Splynx, UISP, Wisphub, Wispro and others.

Bequant detects network congestion and manages the network capacity while improving the subscriber quality of experience. Keeping QoE constant, the network can accommodate more subscribers. Anibal Enríquez, CEO of Communicate, has reported 10% more users per Access Point.

Keeping the number of subscribers constant, the subscriber QoE is improved by reducing the network latency and losses. Cajun Networks has reported 83% reduction in latency and retransmissions going down from a high of 6,6% to an average of 0.32%.

Bequant traffic AI congestion mitigation (ACM) mitigates the congestion, active queue management (AQM) enforces rate limits in an optimal way and application-based traffic policies (DPI enabled) moderate the demand of heavy applications during peak hours.

More information can be found on Cajun Case study and Enhanced Subscriber QoE.

You can prevent routers from being overloaded by offloading subscriber plan enforcement to Bequant traffic management system. At the core of Bequant architecture sits an advanced queue management (AQM) built to scale. Bequant runs on off-the-shelf Intel or AMD servers and supports very high throughput, up to 400 Gbps in one single server.

More information can be found on BQN Platform.

Routers run an optimal packet fast path for core routing functionality and a less optimal path for ACL processing or QoS queues. In many models, just activating those features increases the CPU load and memory usage and reduces the throughput capacity. The impact becomes bigger as more entries are added.

In Bequant, our optimal path involves traffic classification, queues and policy enforcement because traffic management is our core functionality. Bequant incorporates technology such as DPDK to obtain optimal performance.

Bequant runs on off-the-shelf Intel or AMD servers, which typically have faster CPU and memory than router hardware. Thanks to superior hardware and implementation, Bequant supports very high throughput, up to 400 Gbps in one single server.

More information can be found on BQN Platform.

Bequant can enforce per-subscriber traffic policies with very little work by the network engineering team. Bequant can get policies or plans automatically from RADIUS signaling, interacting with the billing system (20 vendors so far and growing) or getting them via Bequant REST API.

Bequant AQM automatically detects and prioritizes interactive flows such as teleconferences or gaming, and its AI congestion mitigation (ACM) is self-learning and does not require manual fine tuning. The manual policies can be much simpler and stable, freeing engineering time.

Bequant improvement of subscriber QoS reduces support calls, further alleviating network engineering workload. Chadd Giles, CTO of Resound Networks, reports a 35% drop in support calls.

Yes, Bequant can enforce per-subscriber traffic policies interacting with the billing system. Bequant is currently integrated with 20 vendors so far and growing. The billing vendors include:

• Aradial
• Azotel
• Gaiia
• Gestfy
• HubSoft
• ISPCube
• ISP Gestión
• ISPSolution
• IXC
• Mikrowisp
• Phicus
• Powercode
• Sonar
• Splynx
• UISP
• Vision by Fibersmith
• Visp.net
• WISPControl
• Wisphub
• Wispro

More information can be found on BQN integrated Billing Systems.

Application-aware traffic shaping is a network management technique that identifies the type of application generating traffic (gaming, VoIP, streaming, large downloads, etc.) and then dynamically prioritizes the flows based on that identification. Bequant implements application-aware traffic shaping in two ways:

• Deep-packet-inspection (DPI): identifies the traffic to apply configured policies. One example is the identification of video streaming during peak hours to moderate its demand.
• Prioritization of interactive flows: Bequant automatically identifies interactive flows by their behavior and prioritizes them in the AQM. This requires no explicit policy configuration.

In most cases, additional network capacity will not deliver any gains, because the speed is mostly limited by the access network and the Wi-Fi last hop. Bequant traffic optimization features (TCPO, ACM, AQM, etc.) will reduce congestion in those network elements and improve the quality of experience in a way that an increase in network capacity will not deliver.

An example of this is Cajun Networks, who has reported 83% reduction in latency and retransmissions going down from a high of 6,6% to an average of 0.32% just deploying Bequant, without any network capacity expansion.

You can request a Bequant free trial on BQN Free Trial Application Form.

Managing subscriber policies in a centralized node scales better as traffic grows because a product like Bequant has bigger capacity, it is more economical to deploy and easier to maintain.

Regarding bigger capacity, Bequant uses Intel/AMD server with faster CPU and memory than router hardware and its internal architecture is optimized for policy management. An added benefit is that Bequant sees all traffic and can apply network-wide fair use policies using very simple rules.

Regarding deployment, one single powerful hardware can be much less expensive to acquire and roll out than many smaller ones, including the interaction with a RADIUS or billing system to get the policies from.

Finally, a distributed solution is cumbersome to maintain, because each element will have its own queue configuration to keep coherent with the rest.

You need to apply fair usage policies based on actual network bandwidth limitations. This will not degrade but improve the QoE for most users.

For example, if a segment of your network has a backhaul link that gets saturated during peak-hours, you can use Bequant traffic management to set a limit for the most bandwidth-hungry applications (e.g. video streaming), and a global rate limitation with scheduling that guarantees a minimum bandwidth for all users. As a result, the QoE of the customers served through that link will improve.

In the end, when well implemented, fair-usage policies allow you to share a limited bandwidth between many users while improving their quality of experience.

A flow monitor is not an active element, it does not act on the traffic, it gets flow information from the traffic devices and makes that information available for analysis. A traffic optimization platform such as Bequant, is deployed online and improves the traffic performance leveraging on the metrics it gets, so the metrics become actionable straight away, even when nobody in network engineering is analyzing the data.

To identify the applications with the biggest bandwidth demand, a traffic equipment with deep packet inspection (DPI) is needed. Bequant has DPI capabilities and it can identify the most popular applications of a specific subscriber, a group of subscribers or the network as a whole. Traffic management rules can be defined to manage those applications and prevent their congestion effects during peak times.

Find an example on how an ISP solved streaming overload in La Harpe Telephone Case study.

It helps by providing key insights into how the subscriber is using the Internet connection. For example, using a DPI enabled product such as Bequant, a technical support team can see what applications are being used at the home network and realize that the reported problem is related to that usage, for example to a big download in combination with streaming sessions by several members of the family.

The network metrics that can signal degradation of the quality of experience better are congestion, losses and latency. If any of these three or all of them combined increase and remain high for some time, there is a high probability that the customer is suffering from a degraded service and will soon complain, or worse, decide to leave without prior notice. This is the reason a product such as Bequant is important; to mitigate QoE issues and to give an ISP the network visibility it needs to proactively solve network issues before they cause churn.

See more information in this Case Study on churn reduction.

By using a product with network visibility such as Bequant, the ISP support team have access to key QoE indicators per subscriber and per network sections that will allow them to focus on impending network issues and address them proactively. Bequant has an AI Congestion Mitigation feature (ACM) that is constantly looking for congestion symptoms per individual subscriber. ACM automatically acts to reduce congestion, but it also reports the congestion found to the network visibility feature, so support teams can rate subscribers based on their experienced congestion. Bequant has tools to facilitate data analysis, such as an automatic ranking of the worst percentile of congestion-suffering subscribers.

Bequant also enables traffic captures and a live view of a subscriber connection at any given time. This real-time view of the network at different levels is what Victor de la Nuez, CEO of WiFi Canarias, highlights about Bequant.

Traffic optimization and network performance data can be combined in a product such as Bequant, that optimizes traffic at the same time it provides metrics of the resulting network performance.

The provided metrics leverage on the traffic optimization part, because Bequant TCP optimization provides accurate latency and losses values, obtained in flows under load, which is what end users experience. This accuracy is key for reliable congestion detection.

TCP Optimization also measures its own acceleration effect by leaving a small fraction of the traffic as a control group to compare the improvements against.

In the latency case, Bequant provides three separate latency metrics to give as much visibility as possible: an average of minimum values (a lower bound of latency values), the median and the percentile-80 (value not exceeded by 80% of the measured values).

The network metrics that can signal degradation of the quality of experience better are congestion, losses and latency. If any of these three or all of them combined increase and remain high for some time, there is a high probability that the customer is suffering from a degraded service. Latency affects the responsiveness of an application, critical in real time applications like teleconferences and gaming. Losses reduce the application available goodput (actual transfer rate of application content), decreasing the effective speed. Finally, congestion brings a degraded experience, with latencies and losses increasing while the available goodput collapses.

This is the reason a product such as Bequant is important; to mitigate QoE issues and to give an ISP the network visibility it needs to proactively solve network issues.

By using a traffic optimization and visibility product that has enough capacity to process all the network traffic from one single location. If geographically distributed locations are required, Bequant servers can be configured in a cluster where any location is accessible from any of the other sites. Of course, collocated servers can also be added to the cluster to collaborate seamlessly with the rest.

AI-driven network analytics speed up the identification of network problems by allowing the support team to express the goals of the issue search rather than following the steps needed to find them, which is more time consuming and requires knowledge of the product capabilities. An AI assistant is a quick way to obtain results for the most common cases, leaving direct interaction with the visibility data for the most advanced cases.

First, the network has deployed a traffic optimization element such as Bequant, because the first level of proactiveness is improving network performance without any human intervention, just using a closed control loop that is continuously processing the traffic, identifying issues and solving them as they occur.

The second level of proactiveness is for that traffic optimization product to provide network visibility that is accurate and detailed enough to detect QoE issues as soon as they happen, even before the affected customers complain.

The third level is importing the traffic optimization metrics into the network management system for analysis and notifications. Next generation management systems also integrate BSS and OSS system information to have a more holistic view of the subscriber satisfaction: the experienced network quality obtained from traffic optimization along with the history of interactions with customer support.