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The Time is Here for Fiber-based Communications
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During the past several years, it has become clear that fiber-based communications driven by high-bandwidth Ethernet-based transport is the way of the future. As the adoption of Ethernet technology continues to rise, it is important to address the historical barriers to using fiber, including the lack of interoperability between carriers, the absence of fiber connectivity in the last mile, and the difficulty associated with bridging fiber and copper infrastructures.
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Critical Networking Technologies for Telco Business Model Evolution
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For telecommunications service providers, the world is changing at an expeditious pace. With proliferating competition and the ascendance of the Web, the services and telecom business models on which service providers once thrived now warrant serious rethinking. Fortunately, their network infrastructure remains a key differentiator even in today’s demanding and hypercompetitive marketplace, and can be leveraged to pursue a number of different business models that add value over and above the bitpipe-based models that have prevailed to date.
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The New Managed Services -- Outsourcing that Accelerates your Business
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There are a number of reasons why the high performance enterprise would consider managed services -- the vast majority of which point to resource allocation. In today’s unsure business environment, organizations simply cannot afford to get mired in anything that does not directly and almost instantly contribute to the bottom line. The result is that enterprises are increasingly outsourcing IT wherever it is feasible and economically possible to do so in order to achieve economies of scale. There is no better place to leverage external expertise while lowering CapEx and OpEx costs than to go with a Managed Service Provider that addresses both business and IT needs.
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Web 2.0 and the Intelligent Network – How a Superior User Experience can be Guaranteed
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If the new wave of applications and architectures currently planned are to succeed (Web 2.0, SOA, etc.), the underlying infrastructures on which they run will need a dramatic shift in capabilities. Without change, many of these new initiatives will fail as they inevitably fall prey to any of a number of security threats, performance bottlenecks and inability to fulfill expectations on user experience. The rich content and nature of Web 2.0 and SOA architectures makes for more security vulnerabilities. This also necessitates the need for strict control of delivery performance across multiple networks and better capabilities that enable management of application delivery from datacenter to end-users who utilize increasingly diverse fixed and mobile devices.
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Fair Use Networking: Preserving "Net Neutrality" with Enhanced QoS
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“Net Neutrality” has become shorthand for a debate over the best ways to ensure that consumers of broadband services can access any and all Internet sites, services and applications, and to ensure that Internet-based content and service providers are not hindered in making their offerings available to the public. The debate rages on how to ensure the status quo, meanwhile congestion on broadband networks continues to grow. Here is a Fair Use Policy Framework based on managing traffic flows.
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Building an Intelligent IP Control Plane for VOD
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For many, the network has been relegated to "dumb pipe" status and viewed as a liability based on the success of the application providers. Until recently this held true as bandwidth was plentiful and most of the applications on the network did not consume large amounts per session. To differentiate themselves, service providers could leverage an IP Policy Control layer to deliver programmable command and control capabilities that enable per session quality of services parameters to be dynamically applied to premium services such as VoD.
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Fair Use Networking: Leveraging Quality To Create Profitability
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What is “fair use” of a service provider’s network? Ideally, service providers should be able to allocate capacity and be paid according to what they carry over the network. While Internet access providers are able to raise prices for customers who require more bandwidth, long-haul backbone service providers pay the freight for growing volumes of traffic from which they generate no revenue, and worse, rob capacity at the expense of premium services
Today there seem to be two approaches to the problem of balancing network traffic and revenue considerations. The first approach is to simply let any customer transport any kind of traffic—and as much as they want—over the long-haul backbone network. The second approach available to service providers for managing bandwidth is to filter out certain types of traffic or lock out traffic from certain content providers.
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The Quest for Triple Play Profitability: The Financial Impact of Architecture Choice -- Part II
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The first part of this article introduced the two service delivery models: a centralized model based on broadband remote access server (BRAS) architecture, and distributed triple play service delivery architecture (TPSDA), which are becoming the norm for new triple play service rollouts. Now let's examine some financial implications resulting from the choice of a network architecture..
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The Quest for Triple Play Profitability: The Financial Impact of Architecture Choice -- Part I
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Service providers are now establishing the new service delivery architecture infrastructure that will be the foundation for their service rollouts over the next five to ten years, catering to both the consumer and business markets. Considering the life span of the network and the strategic investment involved, the service infrastructure needs to be a highly flexible, service-rich, and dependable resource pool that will allow service providers to engage in rapid innovation and rollout, without having to completely re-design their services or deploy new equipment. Here is a comparison of two service delivery architectures with long-term financial implications.
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The Case Against Multi-circuit Broadband Network Architectures
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Today, there are many broadband network architectures competing to deliver the next generation services to residential and enterprise customers. These architectures include ATM-based DSL, Ethernet Access, FTTx, PON, and wireless. The choice of network architecture will dictate which network products will be required. There is a wide array of competing products such as ATM DSL Access Multiplexers (DSLAMs), Ethernet DSLAMs, IP DSLAMs, MPLS Access Nodes, Layer 2 "Access BRAS", Ethernet based BRAS, and Broadband Service Routers. Service providers face a critical choice between a single circuit and multiple circuits per subscriber to deliver next generation broadband services. This is a critical choice because the wrong decision will have a lasting negative impact on CAPEX and OPEX.
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From Layman to Shaman: Why Carriers Should Embrace the TR-059 Architecture
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The DSL Forum’s TR-059 reference architecture, originally proposed by the major North American carriers but endorsed by many others worldwide, sets out to solve the thorny problem of delivering IP quality of service guarantees.
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Bigger Is Not Always Better
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Service providers face a quandary in their IP networks. While conventional wisdom holds that overprovisioning solves most performance problems in IP, certain unconventional network architects are beginning to ask, “what’s less expensive: do I continue to add capacity, or do I fix my network once and for all?”
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Injecting Intelligence into the Broadband Service Delivery Infrastructure
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While broadband is rapidly gaining market acceptance, it’s unclear which delivery and pricing models and applications will gain market acceptance. Service providers must design their broadband delivery infrastructure to support the delivery of high-speed, QoS-sensitive applications, regardless of what they are or how they are billed.
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Intelligent Bandwidth and the Consumer Experience
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The video revolution will ultimately put the consumer in control rather than the broadcaster. It will let viewers decide what they watch and where and when they watch it. This new model requires more than the simple delivery of content. The key is in managing bandwidth through prioritization, guarantees and choices.
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Edge Intelligence Must Remain in the POP - Adding Router Blades to DSLAMs Won’t Scale
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As ILECs transform their service portfolios, they must evolve their DSL networks to profitably deliver video services. In order to deliver advanced IP services without completely upgrading the DSL access network, ILECs should introduce or leverage next-gen Broadband Remote Access Server (B-RAS) functionality.
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