Spirent sees traffic management, virtualization and proactive testing as key drivers in 2016
Editor’s Note: With 2016 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.
We’ve heard the forecasts: explosive growth in the numbers of connected devices, new applications driving massive growth in the amount of data these all generate and continued growth in mobile equipment sales to deal with both. Consider the findings from this year’s Cisco Visual Networking Index: By 2019, there will be 5.2 billion mobile users (up from 4.3 billion in 2014), a tenfold increase in data running on global mobile networks and an annual rate of 292 exabytes of traffic (compared to 30 exabytes in 2014).
All this growth will stretch the limits of wireless carriers’ networks. To ensure performance, ease network congestion and overload, and meet customer demand for new mobile services, carriers in 2016 will:
Prioritize wireless traffic and orchestrate the network
Global LTE subscriptions are nearing the 1 billion mark, according to a recent research report from industry trade organization 4G Americas. The adoption is fueling opportunities for wireless carriers to offer value-added services such as video over mobile, “Internet of Things” services like asset or shipment tracking, or even machine-to-machine services such as those used by oil and gas or power utilities. Bandwidth requirements and impact will vary from service to service, so carriers will need solutions to prioritize and traffic and orchestrate the network elements so Quality of experience and quality of service levels match the requirements for each service.
Embrace virtualization
IoT is getting huge. According to the Cisco VNI, there will be 8 billion connected mobile devices by 2019, and 3.2 billion of those will be M2M connections. To keep up, carriers will have to embrace virtual architectures like software-defined networking and network functions virtualization. To date, there have been a lot of trials and early deployments, and in 2016, I expect we’ll see much greater use of virtual networks for mobile communications like IOT.
Adopt live, proactive testing
As virtualization is deployed, and prioritization and orchestration technologies are implemented, wireless carriers will need to rethink their network testing and monitoring strategies. Lab-only, static tests and passive monitoring should give way to live network testing that uses a proactive approach and gives operators network performance visibility across their networks. These tests should be able to detect degradations before they impact customers, verify network functions just before they’re connected and even enable automated, real-time validation of configuration changes and upgrades.
