UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
THE ADAPTIVE
NETWORK
MUST SCALE
FROM BOTH
CAPACITY AND
OPERATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES.
are committed to ensuring the operation
and customer experience of the adaptive
network by providing solutions based on
openness, security and scalability.
Openness is critical in the adaptive
network to allow network providers
choices in the products and technologies
they can deploy to enable their network
evolution. Providers that embrace
openness will be able to select the
technology solutions that best meet
their needs in terms of operational fit,
performance, power consumption and
telemetry, resulting in dramatically
lower costs, increased agility, simpler
scalability and a network architecture
64
Issue 04
that is highly flexible, to take advantage
of future innovations that may not be
apparent today.
Security is paramount in the adaptive
network to ensure it can remain
responsive, flexible and adaptive to
changing market dynamics. Network
providers must consider the following
security requirements as they evolve
their networks:
• • Ability to secure and protect the
exponential growth in data traffic over
the network.
• • Increased levels of automation and
fewer manual processes require greater
security measures to detect and
mitigate security breaches.
• • More open, best-of-breed
environments must be governed
by security protocols to ensure
the protection of data across
heterogeneous networks.
Scalability in the adaptive network is
required, as mobile device proliferation,
streaming video, cloud computing, IoT and
the evolution to 5G will all put massive
pressure on network capacity. Meeting
the demand will require network capacity
increases in orders of magnitude, as well
as the need to respond to unpredictability
in traffic patterns. The adaptive network
must scale from both capacity and
operational perspectives – transporting
maximum capacity using minimal
equipment to get the most efficiency from
fibre assets, and using software-based
control to offer the ability to automate
processes and adjust bandwidth in real
time to meet changing customer and
traffic requirements.
A focus on services
The ever-increasing expectations of users
– and the technology breakthroughs that
continue to feed them – have created
an unprecedented level of pressure and
complexity for today’s network providers.
Some strategic approaches suggest that
complexity is the enemy and that a fully
automated network is the answer.
With the adaptive network framework in
place the network operator can focus on
providing services and service levels that
differentiate against less agile rivals. The
evolution of the adaptive network is only
just beginning though. With some market
commentators already talking about 6G, it
is easy to see that the network evolution
will run and run. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com