Reader Forum: Metro networks need to evolve to meet growing demand

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
We live in a digital world where consumers and business alike are looking to improve the end-user experience. This can often mean breaking the status quo by finding new ways to achieve the end goal.
Consumer’s preferences for accessing content have evolved significantly over the years. While the television may have been the single source of home entertainment a decade ago, today’s home has a plethora of Wi-Fi enabled smartphones/tablets, Internet connected gaming consoles and smart TVs. Further it’s not uncommon for consumers to access multiple devices within the home concurrently. Low-speed Internet connections are not good enough anymore with speeds pushing north of 10 megabits per second in many homes.

Mobile network connected devices are breaking the boundaries on speed as end users take their home experience on the road, thereby demanding higher speeds from their mobile operator. Businesses are evolving to support some or all off their business applications from the cloud (e.g. SalesForce.com). It’s not uncommon for enterprise end users to bypass their IT departments and provision cloud services from an external cloud service provider (like Amazon.com Web services), trending towards a certain mass adoption of cloud based models in the near future.
Spotlight on metro networks
Due to the above trends, end users are demanding higher speed connections into their communications service provider’s network. The demand for video- and cloud-based delivery models is resulting in a proliferation of data centers – which host content, applications or infrastructure – within the CSP’s network. In particular the metro network (metro is derived from “metropolitan” and sometimes referred to as “regional” network) is where the end users connect into the CSP’s network. As such the metro network acts as the on ramp for delivery of consumer and business services.
According to a recent Bell Labs study, total metro traffic is expected to grow 560% by 2017. The results indicate a significant increase in total metro traffic over the next five years. IP video and DC/cloud traffic are the largest drivers for growth. The Bell Labs study forecasts that traffic derived from video (pay-TV and Internet video) will skyrocket by as much as 720%. Data-center (user-to-DC and DC-interconnect) traffic is forecast to increase more than 440% during the same time period.
The metro network must evolve
The good news is we need an evolution of the network architecture, not a revolution. Advances in ultra-broadband access, combined with growing video traffic and a move to cloud, are driving the need for higher capacity and rapid service turn-up in the metro. DC proliferation and growing video traffic are behind a fundamental shift both in the way metro networks are architected, and how existing and future services are delivered. The metro network will need to evolve across the IP, optical and management domains to enable an agile, scalable and efficient network infrastructure. To meet this need, it will require metro-optimized high capacity IP and optical platforms, tight integration between the two domains and introduction of software-defined networking solutions.