Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) December 2016 Volume 33, Issue 11 | Page 26

26 December 2016

The impact of virtualised network on services and applications

Over the past several years , the topic of the day in the world of networks has been the development of new technologies and trends aimed at optimising the cost and flexibility of delivery of communications and content .
The most significant of these are , of course , the emergence of cloud computing and network functions virtualisation ( NFV ) combined with a new standardised way of managing networks known as software-defined networking ( SDN ).
To enable this , a highly automated global view of services is required with SDN being the natural candidate . There are some extreme challenges here too . Firstly , the use of open sourcing of software to create rapidly deliverable solutions creates serious concerns regarding carrier-grade software and the reality that solutions are siloed and cannot interoperate globally . Also , a common migration strategy has not been agreed , nor is there a clear purchase on-demand .
The Broadband Forum ’ s role is to help realise the potential — not just for delivery of new technologies for their own sake but also to see how they can be translated into new revenue-generating services with software-based solutions and new management approaches prioritised by how the network can deliver sustainable revenues in the broadband network .
path for the many hundreds of local and regional
Part of this effort is , of course , migration and co-
Especially in the world of broadband , this is made more challenging by other factors , including the integration of a plethora of Internet of Things ( IoT ) elements and the significant impact of new ultra-fast broadband , based on G-fast . Finally , there also exists the potential for the integration of broadband and 5G networking .
Towards the end of 2015 , the Broadband Forum published an overarching vision that focused on the separate and collective impact of these new technologies to accelerate delivery of new revenue-generating services and applications . This living work is known as Broadband 20 / 20 , and this short article looks at how these initiatives are progressing and how the concepts will also embrace and impact the whole world of content delivery , broadcast and media .
First , there are some clear trends in place right now . The large service providers have unanimously decided to adopt NFV in order to create highly flexible compute and network elements distributed through the network and to enable enterprise , virtual customer premise equipment services as the primary application .
providers to embrace these new concepts .
Despite these challenges , the lure of a unified approach is enormous , and as we look at the above picture we can see the tide of change that will sweep across the world of networking . This includes delivery of content , entertainment such as gaming and virtual reality , as well as business applications into people ’ s homes and mobile locations . An important part of this movement is the distribution of virtualised compute power further into the network to the cloud central office and customer premises . It ’ s also critical to understand how performance and security aware services can actually deliver the quality of experience and
existence strategies as well as interoperability , and testing this approach has already resulted in more than 350 million installations of the
Forum
’ s TR-069 protocol , worldwide .
One thing is clear , the integration of all the elements of networking shown in the above chart is both inevitable and exciting .
The prospect of new platforms for agile services for all the applications that we can imagine is beginning to become apparent arent with the initial
NFV deployments and we can see the steps to a truly virtualised network starting to take shape . q
ROBIN MERSH
CEO , Broadband Forum
• Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks . For more information , visit www . broadband-forum . org .