It’s all about the network — a smart one
More than two decades ago, Wired magazine reported on the great battle waging between “Netheads” and “Bellheads.” That battle is now long over: massive telephone switching infrastructure has been thrown out of central offices to make space for optical switches, IP routers and data centers. Voice — that old-fashioned service where you talk to someone in “real time” — has been relegated to an icon on our smartphones.
Over the same two decades we have seen amazing progress of wireless and mobile technologies, allowing text messaging and limited data connectivity in 2.5G/3G and ubiquitous mobile broadband in 4G/LTE.
5G promises even more, with higher bandwidth, lower latency, improved security and reliability, and network slicing — all at a lower cost per bit and with an opportunity to address new frontiers such as Industry 4.0.
With all the excitement around the use of new spectrum with advanced 5G radios and a new 5G cloud packet core, Netheads will tell you, “It’s (still) all about the network.” For them, the way to achieve maximum efficiency is to place all services on one converged, multiservice network that supports 5G and 4G plus fixed (enterprise and residential) services. They see the network of the future as a smart interconnecting fabric that must facilitate dynamic interconnectivity for millions of humans, billions of devices and trillions of application flows. While a lot of the “tentacles” of that network will be 4G and new 5G radios, to support wireless connectivity and mobility, a great many of the endpoints will continue to serve wireline services: our connected homes, enterprises and places such as hospitals and schools.
And the network is all about all-IP
Over the past decade we have witnessed an amazing evolution of IP-based networks; from best-effort networks providing basic internet services to true multiservice networks providing a mix of fixed residential and mobile broadband services, business virtual private network (VPN) services and cloud services — all while carrying a lot of mission-critical applications.
IP networks have gradually replaced most of the legacy networks, resulting in more efficient and converged network infrastructures. This is not only the case for service provider and enterprise networks; the same evolution applies to strategic industry networks such as defense, energy, health care, transportation and government. Hyperscale enterprises have also used IP technology to create their super-large, interconnected and globally distributed data centers.
The scope of IP networking has also evolved greatly. Largely through a protocol unsurpassed in its importance or success — the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) — IP has tied the internet together during the internet’s impressive development over the past 20-plus years. IP has been extended to enable new services such as IP VPN (BGP/MPLS IPv4 VPN and IPv6 VPE) and Layer 2 VPN services (virtual private LAN, virtual leased line, and BGP/MPLS-based Ethernet VPN) and to support network consolidations using large-scale MPLS network designs, now commonly known as seamless MPLS. With its wide and versatile set of protocols, IP has also become a toolkit to simplify operations, enhance network security, and improve network stability, resiliency and overall performance.
No other protocol carries such a large and varied set of information in networks today. And no other protocol is so central to many networking functions and services, both internally and across huge interconnected domains.
All-IP transport for the 5G era
Mobile networks have effectively been all-IP since the introduction of 4G/LTE, with all interfaces in the 4G/LTE/LTE-A architecture based on IP.
Given that an immense number of end-user devices also use IP natively, centering the mobile transport around the IP networking paradigm has proven to be a very good choice: IP-based mobile transport provides end-to-end, cost-efficient control of all IP-based network resources and ensures operational transparency of all network services.
With its immense set of extensions, enhancements and evolution in the form of IPv6, MPLS and segment routing, IP has positioned itself as a universal Layer 3 networking technology. Through pseudowires, IP facilitates interconnectivity of systems based on Layer 2 technology (Ethernet) and legacy mobile generations. IP has also evolved into a tool for ensuring quality of service and network-wide communications security (through IPsec), and into a mechanism for secure and precise distribution of essential network information such as synchronization and telemetry.
The all-IP approach continues in 5G. It is envisaged that the user plane (packet forwarding) for network slicing in 5G will likely be one or more of the standard IETF data planes: IPv4/IPv6, MPLS and pseudowires. This likelihood, along with IP’s super-rich connectivity capabilities, make IP a key technology for network slicing of the transport domain in 5G. While the standards bodies are still deciding exactly which IP protocols (existing or new) will be used for network slicing, there is early consensus that a lot of the required functionality can be delivered by a judicious mix of today’s IP capabilities, including operations, administration and management (OAM) and traffic engineering.
A pragmatic approach: Massive 4G rollouts with 5G network capabilities in mind
The well-established IP network hierarchy — access-aggregation-core — continues to evolve in the 5G and edge-computing era. The layer closest to cell sites, the access layer, is quickly being upgraded to support multi-gigabit connectivity and must intrinsically support security and synchronization features. The aggregation and core layers are growing and changing, now requiring that the high performance needed for large-scale packet processing be coupled with service intelligence. A new requirement for dynamic interconnectivity of physical and virtualized network domains is driving the need for automated, multi-domain interconnectivity of network functions across the network and distributed cloud data centers.
To deliver the full promise of 5G, the transport network (not just radios and packet core) must also match the most critical 5G requirements and be able to ensure high bandwidth, low latency, dynamic interconnectivity, end-to-end security and high reliability. This can only be achieved by deploying the new generation of networking equipment, built and designed for the 5G and cloud era. For operators who are rushing to 5G, this network transformation has already started.
For operators that are a few years behind the most aggressive 5G plans, this doesn’t mean they need to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Leading operators in this group of “5G pragmatists” are realizing that the network itself and its performance can be a tool to differentiate themselves from competitors and obtain market advantage even before they implement 5G.
Network investment is always a balancing act: add too many new subscribers, but don’t invest in your network, and you will see a reduced user experience and increased subscriber churn. Therefore, these 4G operators have also started their network transformation, deploying 5G and cloud-ready infrastructure to address their current 4G/LTE requirements and to prepare to address 5G. Some of the most aggressive of these LTE and LTE-A rollouts, done in parallel with preparations for 5G, have been executed under the motto “every dollar spent is a 5G dollar.”
For both strategies, one network for all services — not just for all-generations-mobile (3G/4G/5G) but also enterprise and residential — seems to be the only way to achieve the full suite of service, operational and business efficiencies. For many service providers, the approach to deliver this all-service, one converged network is through a multiservice all-IP network. This is what Nethead CTOs tell us they are doing.
Alex is a Director of Product Marketing in Nokia, focused on the Deepfield portfolio of products and solutions for IP network intelligence, analytics and DDoS security. Alex started his career working on academic and research projects at the University of Belgrade, followed by harmonization of ITU-related standards and national regulatory activities. During his 20+ years in Newbridge Networks, Alcatel, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia, Alex has been with sales support, network design and consulting, network engineering, business development and product/solution marketing teams, covering a wide range of technologies such as IP, NFV, 3G/4G/LTE and 5G. In his consulting role with Nordicity, Alex has worked on projects related to spectrum management and planning, and spectrum auctions.