Editor’s Note: With 2014 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from leading industry analysts and executives on what they expect to see in the new year.
Last year was a defining year in the communications industry, thanks to the broader commercial rollouts of LTE networks, carriers trialing small cell deployments more extensively and the increased availability of Ethernet services in the cloud. We’ll continue to see more seismic shifts in 2014 as the “connectedness” of devices and networks continues its exponential growth trajectory. Here’s a look what I expect will dominate the networking industry focus in 2014.
Network security goes AAA
Cisco’s most recent Visual Network Index projects over 10 billion mobile devices/connections by 2017, including over 1.7 billion machine-to-machine connections. Increasing the number of network connections also multiplies the network’s vulnerabilities. Because hackers can target anything with an IP address, these security risks rise even more when devices are networked without being secured physically.
Security concerns are certainly nothing new. However, as the number of mobile Internet connections continues its strong growth, 2014 will undoubtedly bring additional challenges for operators. The number of elements required in mobile networks exponentially grows with new mobile devices, their bandwidth-intensive applications and the small cells making them possible. Network equipment no longer resides solely in physically secured locations, such as a macro base station or central office. These new access points can be anywhere – small cells, for example, are frequently installed outdoors at street level or indoors in easily accessible locations. Exposed directly to users, they are particularly susceptible to hackers. Operators will need to encrypt these “last mile” links. Coupled with authentication, authorization and accounting of users and network equipment, strong encryption will ensure the necessary data confidentiality.
As carrier equipment proliferates on lamp posts, utility poles and traffic signals in 2014, expect encryption and AAA to become top priorities. Carrier Ethernet Layer 2 (L2) VPN service offerings are also growing among service providers meaning traffic encryption directly at the L2 Ethernet layer is the well-informed choice. Such L2 encryption is now a feasible option for security over wired and wireless wired area networks thanks to new MACsec technologies.
NFV comes into carrier focus
Conversations around software-defined networking and network function virtualization are certainly top of mind. But, due to complex operational structures, carrier networks won’t see SDN and NFV materialize for some time. Whereas datacenters can implement SDN fairly easily, carriers will first need to modernize their infrastructures.
Potentially, the ability to create multiple, virtual private networks on top of a single physical network is the largest benefit of SDN to carrier networks. Imagine the cost sharing this would allow, as multiple customers and service providers could securely use the same network. There is one catch to this scenario – the entire network needs to support SDN, meaning it requires spending money in order to save money. NFV, on the other hand, promises a faster path for carriers to offer new revenue-generating services at the IP edge with less risk and investment needed. With NFV-ready equipment, carriers can create services in software rather than dedicated hardware, thus making centralized and virtualized servers the launchpad for these new services. Expect carriers to increasingly focus on NFV in 2014, and deep packet inspection to be one of the first NFV applications we see.
“Internet of things” goes Ethernet-IP
Public networks, private networks, cloud networks, industrial networks – the list goes on. “Things” are being connected at a rapid rate,and most of these connections are wireless.Seventy-five billion devices will be connected to the “Internet of things” by 2020, according to Morgan Stanley projections. Users must be able to securely access each of these connections from anywhere at any time, meaning networking technology is of utmost importance.
Industrial applications have traditionally relied on proprietary communications and networking protocols, but higher bandwidth and increased networking demands in Industrial process control, smart-grid energy distribution, transportation and automotive applications demand change. We’re seeing standards-based Ethernet networking establishing itself as an integral technology in this space.
Resiliency, high availability, accurate time synchronization, low power, security and cloud connectivity – capabilities originally developed for carrier Ethernet – are also key features for networks within these broad-based Industrial applications. We anticipate Ethernet-IP based in the carrier Ethernet space will become the networking technology of choice for the IoT in 2014. Furthermore, these networks will require Ethernet to deliver security, timing, reliability and deterministic behavior.
LTE sharing goes mainstream, then transitions to “5G”
The next big thing in telecommunications may be “5G,” but it has yet to be defined beyond a network delivering increased bandwidth. The business drivers are also less obvious than with LTE, and we don’t expect the next “next-generation” network to fully materialize until 2020. As with LTE, 5G will require operators to modernize networks before deployment. These future upgrades may also provide an opportunity to merge fixed, mobile and nomadic network access.
In the near future, expect operators to increasingly implement radio-access network sharing. In this process, mobile network operators with the most capital will install the RAN infrastructure and lease capacity back to other wireless service providers. Depending on capacity needs, operators can alternate capital expenditure or operating expenditure considerations in this system. This year will also bring more SDN, which will enable RAN sharing by dividing partitioning the network infrastructure and virtualizing many aspects of the RAN at the same time.
Martin Nuss, Ph.D. is VP, Technology and Strategy and CTO at Vitesse Semiconductor. Dr. Nuss has over 20 years of technical and management experience. He is a recognized industry expert in timing and synchronization for communications networks. Dr. Nuss serves on the board of directors for the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and IEEE member. He holds a doctorate in applied physics from the Technical University in Munich, Germany.
