Blueprint: Building wholesale networks with OTN

by Chris Janson, Product Marketing Manager, Optical Networking

As we ring in the new year, the transformation of business digitalization continues. We see enterprises increasingly dependent upon networks of highly connected devices and systems to control everything from customer transactions to just-in-time manufacturing. About a year ago, IDC outlined its predictions for 2022 digital transformation. In their report, they foresaw 50% of organizations had transformation plans in place by the end of 2022, and a year later, 90% of organizations would be prioritizing investments in digital tools that augment physical facilities. 

These things come as no surprise to those watching enterprises and their use of technology. Large retailers like Amazon continue to invest in regional warehouses with highly automated inventory control systems. Governments continue to roll out digital systems to control things like municipal parking lots and tax payments. Driving this adoption is the desire to provide better service at lower cost, taking advantage of enabling technologies such as IoT devices and handheld computing power in nearly everyone’s hands (i.e., your smartphone). The result is far-flung entities and their digitalized operations have one thing in common: the need for highly reliable and secure network connectivity. 

Implications for network connectivity

A common thread through any enterprise’s digitalized architecture is the need to connect independent devices and compute or storage capacity. This network aggregates mobile and IoT wireless devices onto an IP-optical wireline network. Modern cellular architecture offers high capacity, low latency, and very resilient performance which must be matched by the backbone network. At layer 3, IP-MPLS routing offers a powerful ability to steer traffic flows exactly where needed and while router capacity continues to grow in pace with demand, there will be a need to perform multiplexing and switching at lower network layers, in the physical backbone network. 

This backbone network needs to be capable of scale and capacity growth matched to the needs of the enterprise. Thirst for capacity has been expanding exponentially for years, demanding that IP-optical networks expand correspondingly. This need for scale has been met through higher capacity routing as well as higher capacity DWDM optical transport systems. Fiber capacities now commonly exceed 400Gbps per wavelength, with some systems now exceeding 1Tbps per wavelength. 

Line capacity is but one performance metric. Service providers must also consider the need for service flexibility, assurance, and security. Flexibility delivers various service protocols and speeds needed by each customer while ensuring performance at defined service level agreement tiers. At the same time, the service must be highly resilient to outages. The service also needs to be secure from theft and intrusion. Some large enterprises will insist that their traffic is logically, if not physically, separated from other user’s traffic. Encryption needs to be provided at the transport layer, which is safe from harvest now, and decrypt later attack in the presence of a practical quantum computer. 

Opportunity for service providers: retail or wholesale

These elements form simple requirements that a service provider needs to meet to enjoy a sizable market share in providing differentiated services to various enterprise customers. For the typical communication service provider (CSP), the question becomes: should they operate as a retail provider or partner with another provider as a wholesale provider? 

For reasons from regulation to the practicalities of customer support, a CSP may decide to set up as a wholesale service provider, working with a retailer to provide last-mile connectivity and customer support for local enterprise markets. This is a very practical solution that can help the CSP capture revenue which otherwise may be lost. Optical transport technology makes this business arrangement very practical to deploy and operate. 

OTN makes it practical

Optical Transport Networking, standardized in ITU-T G.709, provides a set of tools that service providers can deploy to help their wholesale business operate seamlessly. An Optical Transport Network (OTN) is ideally suited to provide an end-to-end solution for various service requirements that demand security, scalability, low latency and high availability. OTN improves network efficiency and utilization and can carry any traffic type including legacy services. The enhancement includes components common to DWDM systems – transponders, optical mux/demux modules, amplifiers – but OTN adds switching and grooming capabilities at layer 1. Multilayer optimization is achieved by using an optimal mix of electrical grooming and photonic transport for increased scalability and flexibility.

OTN incorporates coherent electro-optics to optimize reach and capacity over large metro, regional and long-haul networks as well as to scale solutions in the core. At the network edge, OTN solutions need to be compact, versatile and extend services all the way to customer premise sites to provide carrier-grade service demarcation with end-to-end service assurance. Modern OTN networks provide advanced control plane options for carrier-grade restoration and protection and are managed by advanced network automation and management tools.

In delivering a high-value, SLA-aware solution, OTN offers powerful yet practical tools for premium wholesale and business services with flexibility, security and guaranteed performance. The business services can span from network edge through metro aggregation and core for end-to-end connectivity. OTN delivers efficient aggregation and multiplexing of services that avoids cascading and complexity while supporting any topology mesh with fast service rollout. OTN services are flexible, with client interface and protocol versatility, using any-to-any service connectivity, and SLA-aware provisioning. OTN services are also reliable, with multi-failure restoration, secure through hard traffic isolation within the OTN payload, guaranteed latency and deterministic bandwidth. 

As one example, the use of OTN in a wholesale network allows the operator to slice capacity in any optical line among various user classes, each with its SLA. Traffic slices can be isolated appropriately from each other, using a combination of layer 2 switching for soft isolation and layer 1 OTN for hard isolation within the same optical data unit (ODU). An example of this is shown in figure 1, where various sub-rate services are soft-isolated within ODUFlex 1, while the entire ODUFlex 2 slice is hard-isolated from the rest of the ODU4. This way, the end user performance is ensured as determined by their respective SLAs. 

A service provider who deploys an end-to-end OTN solution is well-positioned to deliver the range of connectivity services demanded by modern enterprises. Whether operating directly with the enterprise, through a retail service provider, or a combination of both routes to market, OTN helps service providers optimize their market share and revenue.

About the author

In his current role with Nokia, Chris Janson follows trends in optical networking technology and their application to finance, healthcare, utilities, government and educational customers. Mr. Janson has been a speaker at many conferences including Interop 2014, Internet2 annual technology meetings, and a 2015 series of executive forums sponsored by CenturyLink and CIO magazine. 

He has also shared his work through many webinars, written publications, on-line videos and articles. Mr. Janson also serves on the boards of directors of the Rural Telecommunications Congress and the non-profit OpenCape Corporation. He holds an MBA from Boston University and Bachelor of Science in engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology.

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Blueprint: Why CSPs need to shift to support root-cause analyses

by Stephanie Sculley, Head of Analytics Practice, Advanced Consulting Services West at Nokia

Today’s networks are complex to say the least. Because of that, it can be difficult to determine the underlying cause of an issue that’s hindering the customer experience. 

For some communications service providers (CSPs), chasing the wrong suspect can result in wasted time and effort while the true criminal runs free continuing to frustrate customers. 

This unproductive cycle is prevented with root-cause analysis, which identifies the actions that are needed to solve problems, minimizes churn and keeps customers happy, or at least happier. Not only does this save time, but it also helps CSPs keep their decisions customer-focused.

Nonetheless, there are three areas where CSPs often get stuck when trying to conduct root-cause analysis to address these problems, but fortunately, switching up one’s mindset can help to mitigate these common errors. Let’s find out how.

You Don’t Know If You Don’t Ask…a Lot: How to Solve the Problem with Meaningful Questions 

A cold has similar symptoms as an allergy, the flu or even a more serious diagnosis. So, if someone says they have a cough or a runny nose, the doctor needs to ask the right questions to come to an accurate diagnosis. This may even involve doing research or even consulting other professionals, who may have experience in other areas.  

While not the exact same scenario, this is a similar situation to what CSPs face when trying to determine the cause of network issues. Performance and service-related issues can originate from various sources from device manufacturers, content or app providers, user behavior, device manufacturers, or even the network itself, making it near impossible to figure out the cause of problems on one’s own.

Thus, it’s critical that CSPs ask the right questions to determine the cause of lagging key performance indicators (KPIs), growing customer complaints and churn.

Finding a true root cause can be like peeling an onion; there are many layers of investigation. With each new layer exposed, it’s vital to analyze and inspect the relevant details as moving too quickly with a possible solution could result in breaking KPIs in other areas. 

To assist in the root-cause analysis process, many turn to artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). However, while excellent and essential, these tools also require deep, hands-on experience and the correct data to generate conclusive solutions — ultimately bringing back up the importance of asking the right questions. 

Finding a Needle in a Needle Stack: How to Work with Data

Aside from asking the right questions, CSPs looking for the root cause of customer experience issues can also get hung up on vast amounts of data. 

Most CSPs have invested significant time, resources and energy into integrating sensors and devices throughout their operations with the aim to collect meaningful data. But instead, the data often has the opposite effect as CSPs are left with massive amounts of information that area struggle to sort through and generate value and actionable insights off of. 

To truly capitalize on their data and the findings it uncovers, CSPs need specialized tools along with industry expertise and advanced domain insight. Fortunately, telco data consultants who have worked with various CSPs in different industries can utilize the best practices and lessons learned from these experiences to truly investigate the large pool of data and uncover the most meaningful insights to determine the correct root cause and best course of action. 

The Customer Really Comes First: How to Start Making Customer-Centric Decisions

The last area where CSPs get stuck is with their decision-making process. Commonly, CSPs focus on a performance-driven approach to decision-making. This puts additional emphasis on areas such as the quality and capabilities of segments of their network. However, this narrow focus on just the radio access network (RAN) or the core can have a net negative impact on the business’s operations when it does not simultaneously better customer experience.

By focusing on the customer end-to-end in the decision-making process, CSPs can ultimately keep customers happy instead of causing their eyes to wander to competitors. But doing so requires a deep understanding and knowledge of the true cause of service complaints to properly address issues affecting the customer experience.

Take the example of customers complaining about dropped calls. At a surface level, it may seem like a solution to invest in optimizing network performance in their area, even if it may risk increasing consumer costs. However, the customer may still be affected by the end-to-end service path, which means that the isolated optimizations might not even improve their experience. Even worse, these increased costs, which may be portrayed as higher service fees as a result of the optimization, could cause the customer to ultimately choose a different provider. 

As a general principle of end-to-end customer-focused decision-making, an investment isn’t effective if it doesn’t better the customer experience. And as a part of that, it’s crucial to uncover and act on true root causes. 

And if issues continue to be unclear or complicated, it may be worthwhile to collaborate with an external partner, who can provide expertise and perspective when investigating root causes. 

Not only would an external provider supply broad industry insight based on ongoing work with various global CSPs, but they also have the domain knowledge and AI/ML expertise needed to ask the right questions, analyze data and uncover the true root cause of any issue – improving end-to-end customer experience by ensuring the customers’ needs are addressed head-on.

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Blueprint: To unleash the 5G opportunity, we need to tackle 5G operational challenges

by Charles Thompson, Vice President, Service Assurance, Spirent Communications

5G brings incredible opportunity for communication service providers (CSPs), enterprises, and the broader digital ecosystem. By 2022, there were already 700 million 5G subscriptions across more than 70 countries—an explosion of devices that can take advantage of 5G density and performance. Even more exciting, the industry is gearing up to unleash a new generation of enterprise use cases across manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and other verticals. 

Operators and their customers are banking on new 5G capabilities like ultra-low latencies, native cloud/edge connectivity, and network slicing to fuel transformative new business models. Before that can happen, however, we need to be confident that CSPs can actually operate next-generation networks and services. And so far, that’s not a given. 

5G introduces a radically different network than CSPs have worked with before, requiring new strategies for monitoring, troubleshooting, and other basic network operations. It’s tempting to focus on the amazing 5G possibilities. But for most CSPs, just assuring 5G networks and services remains a work in progress. 

Navigating 5G Complexity

Why does 5G present so many challenges? Because it changes pretty much everything about telecom networks, from deployments to updates to the basic definition of “network infrastructure.” Most current operations strategies were designed for yesterday’s networks. They’re built to assure mostly hardware-based network functions from one or two vendors, and services with fixed, predictable traffic patterns. In a 5G world, however, the network mimics a living, breathing organism, composed of virtualized and disaggregated software running as a dynamic hybrid cloud. 

It’s a huge change, and for CSP assurance teams, it brings: 

• New technologies: 5G network functions are more flexible and adaptable, scaling in and out dynamically as conditions change. But for teams trying to monitor network services, this means service paths constantly change too—including traversing clouds and infrastructure segments outside the CSP’s control. 
• Cloud software models: By running open, disaggregated network architectures, CSPs can work with new vendors and more quickly tap into new innovations. But these architectures also bring many more network layers and interfaces that assurance teams now have to observe. Additionally, instead of receiving software updates two to three times per year and implementing them in fixed maintenance windows, operators now receive continuous updates from many more vendors, each releasing on its own cadence.  
• Cloud-centric architectures: The passive assurance tools used to monitor 4G networks assumed a more centralized topology, with the “network edge” located in a few large regional data centers. To enable new 5G use cases with ultra-low latencies and advanced edge intelligence, CSPs are embracing highly distributed architectures. Large operators might maintain 50 edge data centers—and potentially hundreds more “far edge” sites hosting network functions closer to customers. When monitoring is designed to observe a few fixed points in the network, that’s no longer enough. 
• New security concerns: The traditional enterprise network perimeter has eroded, with most applications and users now operating outside the firewall. As a result, almost all data is now encrypted. How can operators measure end-user experience in an always-encrypted world? 

If you’re wondering how current assurance strategies will adapt to this new reality, CSP operations teams are, too. Traditional approaches rely on passive monitoring infrastructures that collect real user data from live services. This type of monitoring can’t keep up with dynamic cloudified networks and service paths that continually change. Even if it could, it would still only detect problems after they’d affected customers. By then, the stringent service-level agreements (SLAs) on which operators are depending to monetize their 5G investments may already be violated. 

Introducing Active Assurance

Traditional static probes may not scale with 5G networks, but another monitoring strategy seems tailor-made for them: active assurance. Active assurance agents function like a virtual device, injecting synthetic traffic into the network to measure performance from a user’s point of view. They can plug into any part of the network, running the same applications and emulating the same behavior as real users. And since they use the same authentication and trust framework, they provide a firsthand view of what real users experience. 

Active assurance can continuously monitor the performance of complex 5G networks, applications, and services. By emulating real application traffic, CSPs can maintain SLAs for the most demanding 5G use cases. And unlike traditional monitoring, which only measures real user traffic, active assurance can address the full network lifecycle: validating new network functions and slices before activation, monitoring and troubleshooting live services, and re-validating after any change. 

It adds up to an assurance strategy perfectly suited for 5G networks and services. CSPs can:

• Detect problems before users: Active assurance uses artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to spot emerging issues in highly dynamic, distributed environments. Combined with automated activation testing and post-change validation, CSPs can spot many problems before they affect live services—essential for supporting more stringent SLAs. 
• Scale with dynamic 5G networks: There’s no way to instrument static monitoring infrastructure for service paths that are constantly in flux, or that traverse third-party networks and clouds. But active agents work like any other endpoint, sending traffic through the network and observing how the network performs. As a result, they capture the end-to-end service experience—including those parts outside the operator’s control. 
• Accelerate root cause analysis: Since active assurance follows the same path through the network as real users, it provides true end-to-end visibility. Supported by AI analysis tools, operations teams can quickly segment any problem, even when it originates in someone else’s network. 
• Support encrypted traffic in motion: Traditional static monitoring must decrypt packets to analyze the service experience—limiting where it can be used and potentially increasing risk. Since active assurance uses the same security, following the same paths as real users, no decryption is needed. 
• Automate testing: Active assurance plugs right into the automated, AI-enabled operational models that accompany modern cloud-native, software-driven networks. Service providers can automatically invoke active testing as part of Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) toolchains and change management procedures. And they can use automated triage test scripts to quickly isolate issues.

Looking Ahead

5G networks hold enormous potential for CSPs and their customers—provided we can overcome the daunting operational challenges that come with them. CSPs are still refining the monitoring strategies they’ll need to deliver on 5G’s potential. But with active assurance, they have a powerful toolset for assuring 5G services—and a clear roadmap to operationalize them. 

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Blueprint: Reimagining Metro Networks for Edge Computing and Beyond

by Julius Francis, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Juniper Networks

As new advancements are made in 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, doors are opening for network operators to play a more prominent role in the delivery of next generation consumer and enterprise services. However, these opportunities come paired with new challenges. Specifically, these new services and requirements drive increased traffic and diverse traffic patterns throughout networks, demands that will have the most significant impact on metro networks. 

Metro networks will play an increasingly critical role in service delivery innovations; where all services accessing the network converge (e.g., mobile devices, laptops, gaming consoles, IoT devices and sensors, etc.). Traditionally, metro networks were built to funnel traffic into centralized edge and core resources – a characteristic that is rapidly evolving as edge service technologies are increasingly virtualized and instantiated across new cloud resources. The result is more efficient use of metro facilities as more and more workloads remain in the metro reducing latency and improving user experiences. As a result, metro traffic is projected to grow four times faster than anywhere else in the network by 2025.  

To leverage this opportunity, network operators must rethink how metro networks are architected to unleash new digital experiences – from how they’re designed, to how they’re used, to how their resources are allocated. And operators must fully embrace automation to make this new level of orchestration possible. Focusing on this transformation will help operators deliver better user experiences, helping them play a more prominent and profitable role in the digital ecosystem.

Drivers of Change

Over the next five years network traffic growth will continue, driven largely by the increased adoption, virtualization and prominence of edge applications. Cloud computing resources are increasingly being deployed across cloud resources in parallel with the metro, moving the execution of edge services from regional data centers to the cloud – a trend that is expected to increase over the next decade. Many next-generation edge applications and services require low latency and customized SLAs, which legacy networks based on regional data centers may struggle to provide. 

Further, the proliferation of high-quality and mobile video content will increase demands on metro networks. Video content will increasingly be cached within the metro and distributed to users locally rather than from central cache locations within the core. 

As new distributed 5G and edge services push more workloads out to distributed cloud resources, existing metro networks built for conventional networking will no longer be sufficient to leverage the benefits associated with cloud-based edge computing. All of these issues are driving the need for change in network architecture, infrastructure and operation. 

Reimaging Metro Network Design

Many legacy metro networks are designed using ring topologies, which enable metro networks to carry traffic from access nodes, across an aggregation network, to regional data centers. While there are many instances where the ring design can solely provide adequate performance, operators are turning to a new industry trend to achieve the flexibility and agility needed to handle increasing network traffic and fully leverage the advantages of edge computing – the ring topology paired with spine-leaf. In a spine-leaf topology, each network element has a dedicated connection point, which reduces the transit traffic and throughput requirements on each device. Therefore, this combination provides more scalable, flexible and resilient bandwidth and allows metro networks to handle higher rates of traffic and bandwidth needs while leveraging the power of two topologies. 

By reimagining their metro network design, operators can future proof their organizations for the challenges of the 5G, IoT and cloud era. To attain a next-generation metro network, network operators must stay laser focused on achieving the following:

• New network architectures. To keep pace with shifts in metro network requirements and support the dramatic growth in traffic, metro topologies can leverage ring topologies, spine-leaf topologies, or a hybrid of both networking architectures.
• Scalability and flexibility. To achieve elastic scalability, new routers and network architectures with scalable bandwidth, real-time service monitoring and control, and end-to-end automation must be implemented.
• Service and application intelligence. Next-generation metro networks leverage network slicing to intelligently steer traffic to the right physical and virtualized resource by identifying the most efficient path across the network to optimize user experience. Future-proofed metro networks must have cloud computing levels of orchestration and automation to keep pace with evolving services, applications and user expectations.
• End-to-end automation. Network automation is necessary to reduce complexity and help engineers manage the increased traffic load and simplify operations. Manual operations are no longer capable of keeping pace with the dynamics of a next-generation metro network.
• Converged multiservice metro networks. To manage the increasing scope, scale and complexity onto one common network, next-generation metro networks will need to eliminate siloes from legacy networks to focus less on process and more on end-user outcomes.

Metro Networks for Next-Gen 5G, Edge and IoT Services 

The 5G, IoT and cloud era brings incredible opportunity in every market vertical, but there will be growing pains along the way. The key to addressing new bandwidth, latency and orchestration challenges will be for operators to advance and modernize their network architecture. A metro network designed for yesterday’s static transport and aggregation needs simply won’t be capable of supporting the service delivery needs of 2021 and beyond.

By incorporating architectures built for automation and scale, metro networks that offer flexible network slicing, service-aware technologies and cloud-scale capabilities, will exceed user expectations for every service they deliver—while reducing the complexity of operations.

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Blueprint column: Wavelength routing in the 400GE era

by Arnold Jansen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Nokia

The introduction of 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) pluggable digital coherent optics (DCOs) has stirred up considerable debate about innovative approaches to metro access and metro/regional network design that blend IP and optical networking technologies in more optimal ways. The key question is how this technology can be leveraged to more cost-efficiently meet service-level requirements without adding more complexity to network operations. 

Routers, ROADMs and rings

Due to their lower cost, power and space requirements, pluggable 400GE DCOs are generally more economical for shorter reaches than connecting routers to dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transponders in optical line systems. With in-line amplification, 400ZR+ coherent optics can interconnect 400GE router ports over hundreds of kilometers of fiber, and up to 1,000 km at lower bit rates. 

This capability is certainly adequate for most point-to-point fiber applications, but dedicated fiber may not be readily available where it is needed because laying new fiber is costly and time consuming. At least initially, new 400GE router-to-router connections will be implemented over existing fiber plant in metro/regional access and aggregation networks. This fiber is typically laid as interconnected and overlapping rings that aggregate traffic from multiple central offices. 

An IP-centric way to look at metro/regional access and aggregation rings is as a distributed leaf-spine fabric with access routers on the ring (the leaves) connecting into a centralized aggregation router at the ring head-end (the spine). Ideally, each access leaf directly connects with the spine in a logical hub-and-spoke IP topology, especially since the volume and growth of ingress traffic on individual access leaves can differ greatly in urban and regional settings. This allows transport efficiency and latency to remain low and deterministic, as access traffic on the ring is passed to the hub router in a single hop. 

The first option to implement this target architecture leverages 2-degree ROADMs and optical transponders (OTs) to connect access routers to the centralized hub router over protected, point-to-point wavelengths. This is the present mode of operation (PMO) for most communication service provider networks, and is depicted at the left side of Figure 1. Routers connect using 400GE gray optics to performance-optimized OTs that can operate over long fiber spans with many ROADM hops, allowing single-hop connections from each access router to the hub node at full 400G rates.  

Figure 1. IP aggregation over metro/regional fiber rings

In the center, future mode of operation 1 (FMO1) leverages 400ZR+ pluggable router optics instead of WDM transponders to save space, power and cost through IP-optical integration. Through 2-degree ROADMs, all access routers connect to the hub router in a single hop over dedicated wavelengths. For large rings with many nodes, it may be necessary to reduce the line rate of 400ZR+ pluggable DCOs for an increased reach when and where it’s needed. 

On the right side of Figure 1, FMO2 bypasses ROADMs altogether and interconnects routers in a daisy chain over point-to-point WDM line systems between each node on the ring. Each router aggregates local ingress traffic with transit traffic from other nodes, and passes it hop-by-hop along the ring until it reaches the hub router at the ring head-end. With wavelengths having to travel only one hop to the adjacent routers, 400ZR/ZR+ DCOs can connect at the full 400 Gb/s line rate for most router-to-router distances. 

Figure 2. Comparing scaling properties of PMO, FMO1 and FMO2 in aggregation rings 

Figure 2 compares the scaling properties of the PMO with FMO1 and FMO2 for a single aggregation ring with varying numbers of access nodes and amounts of ingress traffic. Although this is a simple modeling exercise, it illustrates several points:  

1. The PMO scales the best with increasing traffic and ring sizes and makes the most efficient use of available 400GE router ports. Although DWDM transponders cost more than pluggable DCOs, fewer of them are required on each ring and current investments in ROADMs and fiber can be fully leveraged. Also note that pluggable 400G Multihaul DCOs will become available for  routers to enable higher capacity-reach over 400ZR+, and as a lower-cost alternative to DWDM transponders. 
2. The FMO1 can be deployed as an overlay to offload the PMO over an additional fiber pair. While FMO1 consumes slightly more 400GE router ports for larger rings and traffic volumes, this upfront cost is offset by incremental savings created by using router pluggable 400ZR+ DCOs instead of WDM transponders. 
3. FMO2 has a marginally lower upfront cost than FMO1 due to minor savings on ROADM capabilities, but its incremental scaling costs are much higher. There is a sweet spot for small rings and low initial ingress traffic volumes where access routers can aggregate all ring traffic over one or two wavelengths, but the number of 400G DCOs required will quickly surpass the 4–6 QSFP-DD network ports that are typically available on a 1 RU leaf aggregation router.

Key Takeaways 

From an end-to-end cost perspective, a critical objective of any network architect is to minimize the number of hops required to transport traffic between source and destination. Each router hop adds cost, latency and power consumption that must be offset by statistical multiplexing gains of packet aggregation, and these gains have diminishing returns with each hop. 

400GE pluggable coherent optics are a new and powerful technology that can be used to cost-optimize IP networks, provided that the number of router hops in the end-to-end data path does not increase significantly as a result. There are two ways to achieve this:

1. Deploy dedicated point-to-point fiber routes where available and feasible. 
2. Provision dedicated point-to-point wavelengths over shared fiber using ROADMs.

When point-to-point wavelengths must traverse several ROADMs, it is generally more economical to either de-rate the capacity of 400ZR+ optics or deploy higher-performance optics such as 400G Multihaul DCOs or 400GE OTs than to bridge the distance with additional router hops or back-to-back DCOs. Importantly, this new generation of compact and modular line systems with ROADM capabilities can ensure that the capacity-reach and cost benefits of 400GE pluggable coherent optics can be maximized for all applications. 

About the author - Arnold Jansen, Senior Product Manager, Nokia

Arnold is responsible for promoting products and solutions for the IP/optical networks group at Nokia. Arnold has held a number of roles in research and innovation, sales, product management, and marketing during his 30 years in the telecommunications industry. Arnold is based in Ottawa, Canada and holds a Bachelor degree in Computer Science from the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences

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Blueprint: Green network quality makes service operators happy

by Stefan Vallin, PhD in Network Management, Senior PLM, Juniper Networks

As we all have been hunkered down in our homes throughout the pandemic, many of us have been trying to make the best of a horrible situation and some of us have taken on new pursuits to keep our minds active.  Where possible, some of us are trying to live as actively as we can during these hard times, perhaps we have reconnected with the outdoors and nature?  Whether it be walking, hiking, cycling or gardening, there is something about fresh air and the greenery of the world that has comforted many of us.  For me, it has been an active interest in my green house for both gardening and contemplation.  There is something about it that allows me to feel very free and focused on something that brings me a little bit of happiness in an otherwise chaotic world of networking and service assurance. (Watch my video below on this topic from my greenhouse.)

Having studied service assurance for my doctorate and working across many roles in the industry with this focus, I recently have reflected on how this anxiety-reducing feeling of “green” comfort is so applicable to service operators.  Green network quality makes service operators and their telecom customers happy.  It’s just a fact!

But why are telecom’s customers not happy?  It’s because when it comes to network quality, services have been far from green.  We at Juniper Networks have researched that in the Service Provider industry, the Telecom NPS (Net Promoter Score) is roughly half that of any other industry.

So lately I’ve been thinking about this and how things are actually just getting worse. First, there is today’s drastically increased requirements on network quality, both in the case of businesses and home end-users that cannot live without a high performing network.  Secondly, there is tomorrow’s promise of 5G which rotates around high-quality services that are ultra-reliable with ultra-low latencies.  So 5G is very much connected to networks becoming critical when it comes to performance, which is tightly coupled with the classic concept of Service Level Agreements (SLAs).  Of course, this may sound like an outdated topic that has been around for decades, but with the cloud and 5G era, it is time to revisit the SLA topic as a key focal point of what we do in the networking industry!

The revenge of SLAs

If we look at SLAs, and what specifically is sold to both broadband and business customers, all communications service providers tout their high quality of experience and bandwidth guarantees, along with network performance that delivers extremely fast response times while minimizing loss, latency and jitter.  However, when we go to monitor these services in the service operations center, we see mostly that device health is being monitored in terms of alarms and performance counters from infrastructure that are not specifically related to the individual customer services.  This is a very device-centric approach.  And although this information may make services appear green, it does not really show service operators that they are indeed meeting SLAs and keeping customers happy.  

So how are service operators showing customers that they are meeting contracted SLAs then?  The process of many operators is to track ticket resolution times for fixing outages and well as outage hours.  However, bad performance over time and intermittent issues are a bigger problem than blackouts: they are harder to detect and they impact customers over a long time.  In fact, in today’s hyper competitive landscape, when customers are not satisfied with their services it has been studied that 95% of them leave without even complaining.  But not only that, they also tell others and boast about the new deal they got with your competitor!  

The cause of this poor customer experience is actually known, and untested network changes not being caught in time are costing dearly economically at the tune of billions, with dramatic negative impact to reputation and customer retention.

It is such a high cost, when the change we need in the industry is fairly simple and at a low cost of ownership.  The shift we need is as easy as moving away from the device-centric approach and taking on a service-centric approach by actively testing end-to-end network quality.  To achieve true SLA guarantees, we need to start monitoring network quality key performance indicators (KPIs).  This needs to be measured at the data-plane while most monitoring solutions are looking at the management plane for insights.  It is exactly this missing element that service operators need to enable services to be truly green and deliver experiences that delight customers.

Active Assurance is the missing piece for improving service operations 

Looking at the typical assurance stack, most operations rely of a mix of solutions.  Typically, a fault and event management system presents volumes of alarms that show you if any devices are broken, answering questions such as “Is the interface up or down?”  Important, but it does not tell you service health.  Secondly, we have performance monitoring systems that look at the overall network health, answering questions such as “How are my links utilized?”  We also have passive probes that give a centralized understanding of traffic flows in the network and what protocols are enabled, answering questions such as “What types of traffic are in my network and how does this traffic flow?”

All of these solutions are needed within service operations, but fail to deliver the service-centric approach needed to truly measure and guarantee end-to-end network quality for your services.  

The missing is piece is called “Active Assurance”.

Meet Active Assurance

Active assurance provides a straightforward approach that can provide immediate results whether you have an existing modern service assurance framework or not.  It works by measuring end-to-end service quality through actively sending a small amount of traffic on the data plane to simulate an end user.

With active assurance, you can easily and cost-effectively deploy a solution that will enable you to automate proactive testing and monitoring on the real-time data plane and locate emerging issues before customers are impacted.  When your services are actively assured, you will be able to guarantee service quality for your services.  This service-centric approach will also enable your service and network operations teams to ensure that all network changes are made right the first time and right all the time.  

So make your service operators and customers happy by delivering truly green network quality with active assurance!  Read our Juniper Networks Paragon Active Assurance white paper on “Service assurance in the 5G and cloud era” to learn more about how you can use it to achieve a proactive, service-centric operations model that puts your customers in focus.  

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Blueprint: Leveraging automation to accelerate assured service

By: Julius Francis, Head of Product Marketing & Strategy, Juniper Networks 

Despite the world’s transition to remote operations nearly overnight, customers have maintained high expectations that their experiences would remain seamless throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. To keep pace with these expectations, service providers have had to shift their priorities to focus on automation in order to deliver reliable, efficient and scalable network operations despite surging traffic patterns and challenges posed by new disparate workforce models.

In fact, a study by Ernst & Young found that the main driver of automation adoption in telecommunications is the optimization of customer experience. Nearly four-fifths of respondents cited that the importance of optimizing the customer experience was the key reason for their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). This concept is known as ‘Experience-First Networking,’ which requires a high level of automation to ensure large-scale networks are run reliably and efficiently.

However, the benefits of network automation extend not only to customer experience, but also to other critical areas where the network plays a foundational role, including Smart Cities, 5G growth, the introduction of AI for new applications and more.

The Vital Role of Networks in Emerging Applications and Smart Cities

There’s no doubt automated networking will play a vital role in the emergence of smart cities. In a recent report by ESI ThoughtLab, North American cities, including 40 in the United States, have more advanced digital services and digital infrastructure than their international counterparts. According to the report, cities in North America are the most prepared to deliver government services built on AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based software.

Beyond the United States, we’re seeing the emergence of smart cities around the world. In Singapore, one of the highest ranked smart cities in the world, there are impressive advances to the city’s technology infrastructure and ongoing digital initiatives. The smart city’s efforts were especially helpful in returning their citizens to normalcy during the COVID-19 pandemic – the government used smart facility management, IoT and surveillance to create advanced, safe and livable urban environments.

With more than two-thirds of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050, networks are poised to play a foundational role in supporting the future of smart cities. As planning takes shape, connectivity will need to incorporate a blend of emerging applications and technologies that will require a strong network infrastructure centered around a secure, scalable and automated multi-cloud environment. Leveraging automation and AI will be extremely important in gathering and analyzing the large amounts of data these cities produce, while allowing networks to make real-time decisions for an overall assured service experience.  

The Growth of 5G

While 5G rollouts slowed in the past year due to the pandemic, we’re now seeing rollouts quickly progressing around the world. This is crucial, as the right 5G infrastructure is required to deliver the next generation of services and experiences to consumers, enterprises and government. 

It’s important to note that AI and automation are required to reduce the operational costs and complexities of 5G networks by automating complex network functionalities and effectively using data to make decisions and solve problems. With massive speeds, huge connection densities and ultra-low-latency experiences, automation will be a critical aspect of 5G rollouts.

Further, with the expansion of 5G, we’re sure to see progress in new consumer applications (e.g., gaming and augmented/virtual/mixed reality), as well as 5G for industry verticals, consumer broadband, enterprise broadband, cloud-managed services and more. As such, service providers should expect to invest in AI and automation to manage 5G networks, ensuring they are optimized to provide assured service experiences to customers.

Tapping AI for Greater User Experience

While network operators have long relied on manual processes for managing connectivity and fixing issues that arise, this approach has consistently introduced human error into the process. The past year made it more evident that connectivity will always be in demand; therefore, it’s no surprise to see service providers continue to invest in open, agile network architectures that enable them to respond, innovate and scale smartly – driven by the expansion of 5G networks, smart cites and other emerging technologies. 

AI-powered automation has the power to transform the way of designing, building and running networks by taking the guesswork out of network operations, removing human error and improving the decision-making process. This will allow service provides to deliver a consistent and assured service experience for both operations and customers.

As the rise of emerging technologies make networks more complex and workforces become more dispersed, service providers must embrace the concept of ‘Experience-First Networking’ and formally place automation at the forefront of their customer experience investment priorities.

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Changing the Rules of the Road with Wireless Wireline Convergence

 by Sally Bament, Vice President of Cloud and Service Provider Marketing, Juniper Networks

Imagine that network infrastructure is a highway with two parallel roads going in the same direction: one for wireless and the other for wireline traffic. But there’s a big concrete barricade between them, and no one in one lane can see what is happening in the other. Now, let’s say there’s an event that changes the rules of the road, such as the pandemic. Virtually overnight, traffic patterns change wildly. There’s less commuting traffic, as rush hour has virtually disappeared. There’s more big-rig traffic, as consumers switched to a fully digital way of life. And while the big-rig traffic could really benefit from more lanes, jumping the concrete barricade simply is not an option.

When transportation systems are rigid and traffic becomes more complicated and dynamic, what are the options? A rebuild of the physical roadway is one option, but it’s expensive, disruptive and takes far too long. Worse, the same result could occur without the ability to adapt to future traffic patterns. 

Fortunately, when it comes to improving network infrastructure, there’s an easier choice – Wireless Wireline Convergence – a set of standards that turns constrained, siloed systems into a unified stack for service delivery. Put simply, Wireless Wireline Convergence (known as WWC) doesn’t break down siloes, instead, it rewires traffic to rise above them. In other words, WWC supports co-existence, interworking and interoperability – for service providers, that means they finally have flexibility in how, where, and when they move toward convergence.

Service Providers Take a Different Road 

The shift to WWC is coming at the right time as demands on service providers have reached an all-time high, requiring them to deliver seamless connectivity to subscribers as traffic patterns shifted and hit peak levels literally overnight.

After all, Fixed Mobile Convergence (WWC’s predecessor) has its limitations. Although it was designed to bridge services across siloed wireless and wireline infrastructures, Fixed Mobile Convergence failed to gain traction because software was tightly integrated with existing siloed platforms. But now, today’s leading service providers are already working to implement different aspects of WWC. Beyond the obvious advantage of a converged network with respect to operational costs, WWC has the ability to deliver new, differentiated service experiences. 

For example, it unlocks superior connectivity by ushering in a consistent access-agnostic service experience, meaning customers get consistent features across multi-access networks and different customer premises equipment. WWC also delivers improved application experiences by making it possible to aggregate available wireless and wireline bandwidth into one logical link that can improve speed, quality of service and reliability. 

And with so much bandwidth being consumed at the network edge from subscribers, devices and applications, the demand to turn up services even faster at the edge has never been so high. Service providers have responded quickly to manage the surge in traffic while avoiding lagging, downgraded quality, and slower speeds, but this on its own isn’t enough – now WWC helps them offer edge services at an even faster rate. 

All Roads Lead to WWC

It’s an extraordinary time for service providers around the globe as the industry undergoes long-term changes in relation to how they build, design and manage their networks. With these changes, service providers are finally seeing a wide-open road for convergence of wired and wireline services in a single service stack. By taking advantage of WWC, service providers can finally break down the walls separating yesterday’s siloed architectures and build a more versatile, powerful network for the future.

WWC will play an increasingly important role in the evolution of the network access and edge. It will help enable an exhilarating degree of freedom in planning and executing business strategies, including distributing network resources where and when they are needed. As major service providers look to incorporate WWC into their strategies, they’ll soon deliver the perfect “road” to meet their changing traffic needs.

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Blueprint column: Rise of cognitive self-organizing networks

by Yatin Dharamshi, Head of Digital Operations - Orchestration and Fulfilment Engineering, Nokia

For many communications service providers (CSPs), self-organizing networks (SON) have been the golden key to efficiently configure and optimize booming mobile networks with closed-loop automation. SON has brought tremendous value for earlier-generation mobile technologies. And if they were not already essential back then, they are undoubtedly going to be crucial for CSPs to manage the complexity that comes with the adoption of 5G technology.

So why does 5G make self-organizing networks more exciting in the next decade compared to the last? To start, 5G is a wireless technology that promises to cut the cord – untethering people and objects from certain locations or places. To achieve this promise, 5G has introduced a slew of new capabilities and deployment options to wireless networks. These emerging technologies include network slicing, dynamic spectrum sharing, beamforming, edge cloud, orchestration and more.

On its own, these technologies already pose difficulties for humans to manage individually. And if these technologies were united, the challenges that arise are becoming more difficult for humans to control and manage with the current toolset at our disposal. Further, 5G offers multiple frequency bands, which combined with network slicing would unleash a myriad of use cases. But with growing number of use cases (and technologies), complexity increases. This is where closed-loop automation comes in, and where SON will shine. Now more than ever, self-organizing networks will be a critical element in the shift toward autonomous operations, which will push current-generation SON to its limits.

A snapshot of SON and its capabilities

Most common self-organizing networks today have five key abilities. First, it drives automation and reduces the reliance on manual operational applications starting from network configurations during rollout to keeping networks optimized thereafter. 

Second, SON can conduct rapid, real-time detection of cell outages or degraded performance. This is crucial for network operators and CSPs to ensure that their networks can efficiently cope with unprecedented loads, as well as calibrate nearby cells to balance out the lost coverage.

The third capability of SON is that it allows for seamless connectivity, which helps network operators achieve optimal performances and overcome challenges around insufficient capacity or coverage and mobility robustness. 

Fourth, self-organizing networks can carry out ongoing network monitoring and healing. A typical example is identification of “sleeping cells,” or cells performing sub-optimally, and instinctively reset it to improve network reliability.

Lastly, SON is great for cost management as it enables network operators to manage and control costs. For e.g., by optimizing a network’s energy consumption. This is done through the active monitoring of cell loads so that traffic cells can be switched on or off automatically when needed.

Upgrading with cognitive SON

Today, many higher-order self-organizing network functions require a human expert touch. By this, I mean the involvement by experienced — and at times, hard to come by — optimization engineers in the following tasks:

• Identify and place network performance objectives
• Evaluate network conditions across individual regions and parameters, such as rural vs. urban, high-volume vs. low-volume, and so on
• Analyze and correct problems, while also determining if those corrections were effective

While having the eyes of a human expert on SON functions is great, the dependency can also create bottlenecks in the dynamic and radically complex 5G environment. Besides, as humans, we are naturally prone to errors. Thus, shifting from human-led automation to fully machine-led autonomous operations is key.

This is where the next generation of self-organizing networks with cognitive abilities come into play. Cognitive SON is ideal because it brings in machine learning to take over manually driven SON functions. To do this, a mobile operator simply sets the objectives, and cognitive SON will do the rest: understanding network context, identifying problems, applying and orchestrating the right actions, and evaluating their efficacy. Machine learning is truly the secret ingredient to cognitive SON’s effectiveness. Its intelligence allows for predictive analytics, so cognitive SON can characterize networks, label different cells based on the deployment area and problems present, and instinctively invoke proper algorithms that provide solutions to reach an objective – all without the need for human intervention.

To take your cognitive SON to the next level, moving certain functions to the edge cloud will be key as it reduces latencies. Mobile operators understand that common networks today require a long time to collect data, and it’s often not real-time or near-real-time. But on the edge cloud, real-time data collection becomes a reality, which allows for faster changes in controls or functions, thus achieving swifter reaction times to problems that may arise. Combine this capability with the predictive analytics brought forth by machine learning, and cognitive SON becomes an extremely powerful tool.

Take a leap of faith in cognitive SON

The benefits of cognitive self-organizing networks are abundant. Its intelligent automation capabilities deliver improved, more consistent customer experiences, while also ensuring timely and automatic problem detection so issues can be mitigated in digital-time.

It’s understandable that not every CSP will be ready or comfortable to leap from their current human-led network optimization operations to trusting a fully machine-led autonomous system overnight. So, to ease CSPs into this new mode of working, cognitive SON offers extensive visibility and open controls so that experts can have a strong hand in influencing its operation’s journey while gradually adopting a fully autonomous system.

As we move deeper into the 5G era and CSPs continue on their journey to digitization, cognitive SON will be the key step for enabling autonomous intelligent closed-loop systems, and therefore achieving successful 5G operations.

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Nework Predictions 2021: TelcoDR's Danielle Royston

 by Danielle Royston, Founder, TelcoDR

A telco will figure out how to really use the public cloud and save 50% on its IT costs – or more

How will it happen? It'll move a ton of software to the cloud and prove: 1) it works; 2) it’ll save a ton of money (the company that embraces the software of the public cloud will see a 50% savings on IT costs); 3) life is sweet! (And way sweeter than it ever was before. I’m talking about taking the oldest, suckiest, super unsexy legacy applications and refactoring them for 90% savings.)

Who’ll be the bold telco? Definitely not a company in the US. Sorry America. It’ll likely be based in Asia, which has moved on from dumb private cloud, and we’ve already seen examples of successful moves to public cloud in this region (take a bow, M1). 

In 2021 we might be going back to 1981-style boldness, but it’ll be a huge move forward for modernizing the telco industry. A bold telco will successfully transition to the public cloud and show everyone else how it’s done. Note to everyone else: be prepared, this change will require all hands on deck.

Telcos will take the wrong approach – and fail

Alongside public cloud success, we’ll also witness public cloud failure in 2021. Without a proper understanding of the cloud ecosystem – and what ‘cloud native’ means: see my 2020 round-up above – telcos will foot some spectacular fuck-ups. On that note: if you want to avoid being that telco, look for my blog in January where I’ll clarify cloud language and explain how each part of the telco business can benefit.

Back to those failures though. It’s common sense to move to the public cloud, but there are still so many misconceptions that telcos will get bound in. It’s not just about infrastructure and IT, for instance. It requires a top-down, organization-wide cultural change. It requires clear communication.

Wrong moves will result in failure. Or, if not complete failure, then a load of back-tracking, additional costs and tails between legs. No one wants to hear ‘I told you so.’ Bank of America probably didn’t. For almost a decade, the institution was adamant that ignoring public cloud and obsessing about its vanity project (aka, building its own private cloud) was the way to go. It wasn’t. In 2019, Brian Moynihan, BofA chairman of the board and CEO, admitted that although it had been pursuing private cloud – and spending on private cloud – third-party cloud providers are 25-30% "cheaper.” It then teamed with IBM to develop a public-cloud computing service for banks.

There’s also the cautionary tale of Verizon, a company that thought it was a great idea to spend $1.4 billion on data center provider Terremark. It later realized it couldn’t compete with the might of the hyperscalers and dumped the business on Equinix.

People will fall for IBM’s #fakecloud

You thought the claws of Oracle were bad? In 2021, you’ll see it’s IBM that has the real talons.

In November IBM launched its cloud-for-telco play. Unfortunately for telco – and bad luck for buyers – Big Blue launched a big crock of shit. This is not cloud. It was fake news. It’s #fakecloud. In 2021 we’ll see the results from the poor suckers who’ve invested and we’ll hopefully see a greater realization that a hybrid strategy and a half-assed move to the cloud will never work.

At launch, IBM tried to persuade telco to keep things on-premise. If you do move to the BFCs, then IBM can manage it all for you. What they didn’t mention was that this would happen at a cost, and it’d be a massive waste of time. Telcos that fell for this trap last year will be adding five more years to their public cloud journey, by which time they’ll be way behind competitors that saved time and money, and whose customers love the service they offer. 

Be wary of IBM, my telco children. Do not fall for the trap!

OpenRAN will explode

The tail end of 2020 saw OpenRAN start to bubble rapidly to the surface of telco conversations. In 2021, it’s gonna explode. Vendors: be afraid, be very afraid. Ericsson’s revenue will slip even further through its fingers – something it already admitted last year, when CEO Börje Ekholm said he expected OpenRAN market developments to “impact revenues” from 2023 onwards. 

Other vendors will hemorrhage revenue as telcos realize that there is (finally!) an alternative to overpriced infrastructure and vendor lock-in. They’ll get choice, at last, picking and choosing best-of-breed elements from whomever the hell they want! More features will be driven into software. Networks will be easier and cheaper to maintain, easier and cheaper to upgrade. Spend on RAN will go from historic levels of around 90% of total spend to 50XX%. It might not be next year, but the development and industry excitement around disaggregated network components will certainly define the trajectory of telcos’ decision making next year.

Pioneers like Rakuten will gain column inches and market share next year. It’s no wonder: Rakuten claims operators can reduce capex CAPEX by 40% with its telco-in-a-box network. Vodafone has also been staking its claim in the OpenRAN space: last November it announced it would be deploying OpenRAN technology at 2,600 mobile sites across Wales and the South West of England.

Experimentation is the name of the game here. There might be failures along the way, but telcos will be less afraid of dipping their toe in the OpenRAN water. This will gear them up for taking a plunge in the public cloud ocean down the line.

There’ll always be another G

You can’t move nowadays without being bombarded with something about a ‘G.’ Clearly people believe the hype – 5G networks will cover an estimated one billion people by the end of the year, attracting 220 million subscriptions, according to Ericsson. And it’s not all about faster speeds and greater capacity … research suggests 5G is 90% more energy efficient than legacy mobile infrastructure.

Telcos are set to ramp-up 5G investment in 2021, according to Fitch Ratings, which has warned there will be increased pressure on credit metrics for most worldwide. Free cash flow, it says, will be constrained over the next three years. But if telcos believe they can monetize all 5G capex by simply boosting customer experience, that’s just not possible. Instead, they should focus on bringing new forms of life into reality with the help of 5G – I’m thinking best-in-class remote work, e-learning and virtual services. 

That capex pressure will only increase with demands for more connections, higher speeds, greater capacity. Telcos simply can’t afford NOT to move to the public cloud, helping them to further enrich their offerings, as well as cut time and costs with reduced latency. Only the foolish would add to that capex pressure by building their own cloud – remove that headache by using the BFCs!

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Network predictions 2021: Ciena's Steve Alexander

by Steve Alexander, CTO, Ciena

2021 will take investment to the edge

5G networks are primed to deliver faster web browsing and video streaming with reduced latency, both very appealing for consumers. But 5G can do so much more once networks have matured. Advanced 5G services like rich AR and VR, cloud gaming, telemedicine, and Industry 4.0 (the connected manufacturing revolution), all require highly reliable networks that can deliver low latency as well as higher bandwidth – but also high levels of intelligence.

For these services to take off, networks must continue to get faster, closer and smarter, utilizing automation intelligence and software to deliver on the hype of these exciting services. A part of building faster, closer and smarter networks is to build out the edge, where we need up to five times more data centres than are available today.

There is already heavy investment in building out edge data center sites to bring the cloud closer to users and this investment will continue at pace in 2021. The carriers know they need to continue to focus on building out their edge infrastructure in these smaller data center sites, leveraging edge cloud capabilities which will mean that services can be processed closer to users, improving user experience and delivering on the bold promises of 5G.

Hitting new network requirements will become automatic

Carriers know the demands we are placing on networks show no signs of slowing as our lives become more digital and distributed. That means network rollout will continue at pace, but networks must now be built to adapt on their own. Carriers have already taken steps to make this happen, but in 2021, we will start to see even more use of software and analytics to improve the way optical networks function.

Advanced software capabilities will redefine how network providers engineer, operate and monetize their optical networks. These software solutions were originally focused on extracting more value from existing network assets. In 2021 will see these software solutions play a key role in new network builds, giving CSPs the ability to fine-tune, control and dynamically adjust optical connectivity and capacity.

Software will also give greater visibility into the health of the network via real-time link performance metrics and increased, end-to-end photonic layer automation. By utilizing the latest advanced software solutions, providers can monitor and mine all available network assets to be able to instantly respond to new and unexpected bandwidth demands and allocate capacity across any path in real time – a function which will become increasingly important year-on-year.

Increasing Digital Inclusion will be key to continued remote working

This year has demonstrated how important connectivity is for people to stay in touch, shop and work remotely to keep our economy moving.  It has also proven crucial to the continued education of students. There is a growing desire to maintain this flexibility even once Covid restrictions are lifted, but this is only possible if you have the connectivity and capacity.

In 2021, we’ll see rural connectivity and digital inclusion initiatives move higher up the political agenda, and solutions like low-orbit satellite connectivity will come to greater prominence. The solution that maximizes ultimate capacity is still scaling fiber based broadband, but we know this can be a challenge in rural areas, so will require a nudge from policy makers to get things moving.

If countries want to stay at the forefront of the digital economy, they must break down the barriers to rural connectivity and invest in fixing the last-mile problem. They must also continue supporting digital inclusion programmes that grant students access to technology and tools. Incentives and initiatives from the government, and an ongoing review to ensure that networks are using the most effective equipment suppliers, are certainly ways to help.

Enhanced reality will step forward as the first killer use case for 5G 

Almost as soon as talk of 5G networks first started, so too did questions about what the killer app for the new standard will be. 2021 might not be the year we get the definitive answer to that question, but it will be the year in which enhanced reality (AR and VR) applications take a step forward. However, it may not be consumer-centric services that light the path, but instead, enterprise use cases could lead the way. 

I think it’s safe to say that all of us have grown weary of online team meetings this year, and ‘zoom fatigue’ has become a very real thing. Next year I predict we will see more instances of AR and VR being used as collaboration tools, helping remote teams regain some of the ‘live’ element of working together. These services will initially need to run over combinations of home broadband, in building Wi-Fi, 4G and 5G networks.  They will ultimately open the door to more commercial AR and VR services over 5G networks and WiFi 6 further down the road. The quality of those networks will take these enhanced reality applications beyond a fun, short-term gimmick into being a viable and valuable service offering.

WebScalers and telcos expand their collaborations to improve our cloud experience

One of the biggest trends of 2020 has been the partnerships that have been forged between telecoms carriers and some of the the hyperscalers. There’s no doubt this will continue and grow well beyond 2021, but as networks become increasingly more software centric there is an opportunity to improve the delivery of new services and applications to the users.

From the perspective of a WebScale operator, service provider networks often appear to be a patchwork quilt of various vendors and technologies. The suite of Internet protocols allows this complexity to be abstracted up to a set of globally uniform IP addresses and this has served us fantastically well. At the same time, service provider networks look largely opaque to the cloud and consequently it is hard to guarantee a user the cloud experience that is desired. To deliver next generation service more collaboration between cloud and network is required.  Making the network adaptive through the use of intelligent software allow coordination between service provider networks and the cloud and will enable a generation of AR and VR-based immersive services and applications.

Steve Alexander is Ciena’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. He has held a number of positions since joining the Company in 1994, including General Manager of Ciena's Transport & Switching and Data Networking business units, Vice President of Transport Products and Director of Lightwave Systems.

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2021 Foresight: Predictions for Service Providers

by Sally Bament, VP of Cloud & Service Provider Marketing, Juniper Networks

COVID’s Impact

COVID aims the spotlight on preparing networks for the unknown, AI/ML will be big focus

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted our world from physical to virtual literally overnight, placing enormous responsibility on service providers to deliver seamless real-time and near real-time experiences at peak traffic levels. Traffic patterns are shifting from mobility towards Wi-Fi and broadband networks, and as work continues to shift to the home, the lines between consumers and enterprise users continue to blur. This implies there will be long-term changes in how service providers architect and manage their networks particularly for enterprise customers, which by extension means to the home. Next year, we will see more focus on ensuring networks are ready for the “unknowns.” We will see accelerated investments in open, agile network architectures built on cloud principles, elastic on-demand capacities, and automation and security for an assured service experience. And with a heightened focus on service experience, we can expect automation, service assurance, AI/ML, and orchestration technologies to take on an even more significant role in service provider network operations, guaranteeing service quality and simplifying operations as networks get bigger, more dynamic and more complex.

COVID accelerates the value of the edge

Networks have never been more critical than they are right now. Business, education, telemedicine, social, all have moved from engaging in person to engaging virtually and multi-participant interactive video calls have become fundamental to our daily lives. We have seen a massive consumption of streaming media (largely video based), and similarly an all-time high in online gaming, each driving CDN growth. Service providers have responded fast to manage the surge in traffic while avoiding lagging, downgraded quality, and slower speeds. Next year, we’ll see service providers double down on investments in edge cloud, moving applications and data closer to users and connected devices to enhance the user and application experience, support new emerging low-latency applications, and make more efficient use of network transit capacity.

COVID drives network security

While security has often taken a back seat to make way for faster network speeds, the pandemic has proven that bad actors will take advantage of crises for their own gain. Next year, we’ll see service providers take a holistic, end-to-end security approach that combines network, application and end-user security to deliver a secure and assured service experience. This is especially important as we’re approaching a second wave of lockdowns and working from home becomes the new normal – which presents an enticing attack surface to attackers. In 2021, we’ll see companies investing more in Enterprise-at-Home solutions with security at the forefront, ensuring that all endpoints in the networks are secure, wherever they are.

5G

5G hype fades as monetization opportunities skyrocket

Despite the pandemic shifting operational priorities, causing some 5G roll outs to slow down, service providers have still been heavily investing in and deploying 5G networks. With over 100 commercial networks launched across the globe, and many more are expected in 2021, 5G is now real, bringing new monetization opportunities for operators. With massive speeds, huge connection densities and ultra-low-latency experiences, we expect to see progress in new consumer applications (e.g. gaming, AR/VR/MR), 5G for industry verticals, consumer broadband with content bundling, enterprise broadband and cloud-managed services, and fixed wireless access services in 2021.

400G

400G deployments ramp up beyond the cloud data center

As commercial solutions become more viable to support the relentless growth in bandwidth demand, we will continue to see momentum build for 400G in 2021. While large cloud providers are driving the first wave in the data center and the wide area network, expect to see 400G ramp up in service provider networks in 2021, as well as across data center interconnect, core, peering, and CDN gateway use cases, among others. We will see large-scale rollouts of 400G in the WAN, especially in the second-half of the year, driven by the availability of lower-cost optics, lower operating expense potential with fewer ports to manage, and pay-as-you-go pricing models that will allow operators to smoothly navigate the upgrades. Looking beyond 2021, we will see 400G appear in metro aggregation nodes as 5G buildouts drive even more traffic and network densification.

Open RAN

Open Architectures remain a top theme, Open RAN is here to stay

The service provider industry’s drive towards Open Architectures will continue to gain momentum in all areas from Open Access (including Open RAN, Open OLT), Open Broadband, Open IP/Optical and Open Core. Open RAN is no longer a question of IF, but WHEN. We will see accelerated momentum in Open RAN globally with RFPs, trials and early deployments as many operators commit to democratize their radio access domain primarily to drive vendor diversity and best-of-breed innovation. While commercial widescale deployments of Open RAN are a few years out, we will see a strengthened Open RAN ecosystem, greater technology maturity and new kinds of partnerships that will fundamentally change how radio networks will be deployed, managed and leveraged for value creation in the future.

The Role Operators can play at the Edge Over 50 billion devices are expected to come online next year, driving the need for edge-located control points to manage these devices in real-time and near real-time. For service providers, this makes edge compute a critical and strategic area of focus. Sally Bament, VP of Marketing at Juniper Networks, discusses the role operators can play in the edge value chain.

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Perspective: Growth occurs at the cloud edge

by Hitendra “Sonny” Soni, senior vice president worldwide sales and marketing, Kaloom

Elvis Presley sang the song “If I can dream” in ‘68, inspired by the turmoil a growing nation was going through. In today’s pandemic reality, connectivity has become more important than ever, but innovation needs to take place at multiple levels to get us where we need to be.

When our startup was founded, the assumptions that SDN and NFV would deliver programmability, automation, drive down costs and disrupt vendor lock-in had not yet materialized despite years of effort from the networking community. 

While SDN promised the Net Ops engineer’s dream of a truly programmable network, it initially enabled just a limited amount of additional software control and flexibility. Without programmability, the hardware could only perform the functions it was created with and networking would continue to lag behind the rapid advances made in other cloud technologies such as storage, compute and application development. 

Gartner comments about SDN’s “Plateau of Productivity” on the analyst firm’s famous hype-cycle curve has led to multiple pundit headlines such as “SDN is dead, long live SDN” and my personal favorite “SDN has left the building.” However, these are not just about naming nuances. They represent the true pitfalls of SDN as it was originally intended – specifically taking so long to mature, being difficult to operationalize and not delivering on lowering networking’s costs.  

Whatever you were doing, or wanted to do, in software you couldn’t change what the non-programmable chip/hardware was capable of. This meant that the much-anticipated rapid innovation pace of software development and open source collaboration that were supposed to accelerate networking capabilities were still hamstrung by a years-long hardware product cycle. If I could dream of a truly cloud-native programmable fabric, here are five characteristics that cloud-native edge solutions would look like. 

1. Open Source 

The real vision of SDN and NFV is built on community-based, open-source standards such as those from the IETF, ONF, The Broadband Forum, The Linux Foundation, and many others.

Recent years have seen an entire ecosystem of truly open-source, collaborative communities geared towards solving the challenges created by SDN’s initial vision. In fact, there are so many “.orgs” working on this that it can be confusing for service providers to decide which one to use to address each of its various needs. Today, many of these have joined, merged, or collaborated with the IEEE, Open Networking Foundation (ONF), Apache, Linux and – in the case of Kubernetes – its Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), among others. 

2. Live Truly on the Edge

New 5G-enabled apps require extreme low latency which demands a distributed edge architecture that puts applications close to their data source and end users. We can’t have autonomous vehicles or other mission-critical manufacturing apps experiencing loss of signal, network interruptions or increased latency. The delicacy of their connection to the network must be automatically prioritized. Workloads need to be managed and decisions made at edge-level precision which requires an end-to-end latency below 10 milliseconds. Much of our public cloud infrastructure today is not yet set up for this. 

For example, the latency from New-York to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure in Northern - Virginia is greater than 20 milliseconds. Simply not good enough. The image below, which is taken from The Linux Foundation’s State of the Edge (SOTE) 2020 report, demonstrates the importance of low latency in supporting next-gen applications.

 3. Make Real-Business ‘Cents

At the moment, the 5G business case is simply not justified, and carriers will not deploy true nationwide 5G because there is no demand for it yet and there needs to be an opportunity to monetize. For example, service providers’ revenues from smartphone users running 3G/4G were about $50 per month. However, connected cars will only generate about $1 or $2 per month, and installing 5G requires extreme amounts of upfront investments, not only in antennas but also in the backend servers, storage, and networking switches required to support these apps. The reality is that 5G will requires a 10x reduced total cost of ownership for the infrastructure deployments to be profitable.  

To succeed any new technology must deliver significant economic disruption. One example of this is network slicing, or partitioning network architectures into virtual data centers while using the same shared physical infrastructure. With 5G-enabled secure, end to end, fully isolated network slicing, it’s conceivable that different service providers – for example MVNOs – could share the same physical network resources while maintaining different SLAs and offering differentiated services. They could also share a half- or full rack, depending on how many servers their apps require. This could enable initial 5G service rollouts while minimizing costs, and risks, via shared infrastructure.

4. Be Green

If there is anything this pandemic has taught us, it is that efficiency is king. We all stopped and realized just how much we needed to get by and how much was wasted. As the global manufacturing economy came to an abrupt halt in early 2020, we turned our focus on critical infrastructure. In that light, many local central offices (COs) are nearly maxed-out in terms of available space, power and cooling, leaving little room to support additional rack units (RUs). 

In fact, large regional cloud facilities were not built for the new distributed edge paradigm and service providers’ legacy Central Office (CO) architectures are even more ill-suited for the shift. Containing an odd mishmash of old and new equipment from each decade going back at least 50 years, these facilities are also typically near the limit of their space, power and cooling requirements.

This major buildup to 5G-supported edge infrastructure will have an extremely negative impact on the environment in terms of energy consumption. According to the Linux Foundation’s State of the Edge 2020 report, by 2028 it will consume 102,000 megawatts of power and over $700 billion in cumulative CAPEX will be spent within the next decade on edge IT infrastructure and data center facilities.  We need technology that can dramatically and rapidly reduce the power required to provide these new 5G services and apps to consumers and enterprises. This image, also from the SOTE2020 report, shows the massive need for more power to support 5G and its next-gen apps. 

5. Built on Collaboration

The “edge” is complicated and in many cases cloud players and telcos have yet to fully comprehend how to manage distributed edge locations and the next-generation of applications they will run. In order to truly succeed this dream takes a village to build, where carriers, network operators and cloud-native solution providers work together. Because if we dream it, we can build it. We truly believe in our calling and we may yet get to that promised land. Ok, that is the last Elvis pundit for this post. Thank you very much. 

Hitendra “Sonny” Soni is the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Kaloom. With over 25 years of experience in sales, business development and marketing in the data center and cloud networking, converged infrastructures and management solutions, Sonny is a passionate entrepreneur, who has spent his entire career bringing innovative technology to the market.

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