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Author Archives: Michael Ritter
A New Era Is Dawning for Optical Networking
Bandwidth demand growing exponentially for years while revenue per bit is dropping causes service provider margins to diminish. When combining this trend with unpredictable traffic patterns and a peak-to-average traffic ratio that is increasing quickly due to the adoption of cloud computing and social media applications, technology that will help service providers to streamline their operations and reduce total cost of ownership is needed badly.
In order to solve this issue, communication networks have to provide more capacity, become more dynamic when activating new services and need to be more flexible in terms of design and configuration. The mainstream trend of offering real-time applications based on a virtualized IT infrastructure – such as server and storage – has a clear impact on the underlying network infrastructure and its topology. Networks have to be designed and built differently in order to provide connectivity more dynamically and to better utilize resources available in the network. Connection paths have to be optimized and shortened to avoid wasting of resources and reduce latency.
Network encryption made easy
Why bring encryption to the transport network? To paraphrase bank robber William “Willie” Sutton: “Because that’s where the data is.”
To date, most data center security efforts have focused on physical security and protecting against Internet threats. However, IT departments can no longer ignore data theft through interception. Despite a reputation for being more secure than standard wiring or airwaves, the truth is that fiber cabling is just as vulnerable to technical hacks. Several years ago, three main Deutsche Telekom trunk lines were breached at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. In the United States, an illegal eavesdropping device was discovered hooked into Verizon’s optical network. Other international incidents include optical taps found on police networks in the Netherlands and Germany, and on the networks of pharmaceutical giants in the U.K. and France. Reports on these high-profile fiber intrusions offered few details. For the most part, hacks typically go unreported, and often undetected.
Tags
256-bit block code AES encryption algorithms Corporate Backbones data backup data protection data security Diffie-Hellman disaster recovery exchange Grid/Cloud Computing Grid/Cloud Computing Low-Latency Transport interception Low-latency Metro Core Transport Mobile Backhaul network encryption Open System Interconnection Optical Transport Packet Optical Transport physical layer San Connectivity Verizon Wireline Backhaul
2010 Global Symposium – in the light of cloud computing
Finally several months of planning and organizing came to an end and the 2010 Global Symposium took place in Frankfurt, Germany last week. Finding me in the middle of over one hundred invited participants from telecommunication service providers and large enterprises was great. They all came to learn the latest and greatest about cloud computing and the role of Optical+Ethernet networks in this booming application space.
Without any doubt, cloud computing will considerably change the ITC industry over the coming years. It was exciting and refreshing to listen to the speakers from T-Systems, Colt and Salesforce.com and to learn that the cloud and its applications are reality already today, in many different flavors. And we also had some first-time experience with an ash cloud sent from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. While the ash cloud worked nicely from a theme perspective, it unfortunately prevented some guests from abroad to attend the event.
Mobile backhaul evolution – bringing broadband to all
With HSPA and EVDO maturing, WiMAX being deployed and LTE getting ready to buzz around, it is soon changing the way mobile phones will access the networks. The bandwidth-hungry new services, applications and the non-stop touch clicks on your smart handhelds are eventually going to obsolete the mature 3G networks.
Whereas, the 4G radio access networks are definitely envisioned to control this ever-increasing wireless broadband traffic, what about the evolution of the backhaul network? Is it ready? Or is it going to be a major bottleneck analogous to the traffic jams seen if only one lane was operating out of a four lane expressway.
Network automation: Key to differentiation and profitability
The goal is clear – increase process speed, reliability, and control so you can provide better customer service, increase productivity, and capitalize on new revenue opportunities. To achieve this goal, service providers need to streamline their key business processes that drive value for customers. They need to optimize, automate, and transform these processes to a more service-centric approach in order to separate the organization from the competition.
Structuring network management around the delivery of services requires automating change across all service components. To be effective, automation must break free of traditional tribes and silos to address all network infrastructure elements, teams and operations support systems.
