Smart Networks

Superior network performance will act as a competitive advantage for operators

Superior network performance will act as a competitive advantage for operators

Telecom operators need to start co-operating with developers and businesses to encourage development of products that make innovative use of their valuable services. The value of a smart product is now dependant on the network infrastructure that provides connectivity. Superior network performance will act as a competitive advantage for operators and there is a need for integrating and operating a multi-vendor, multi-technology communications network. Managing such networks will involve developing efficient strategies for network planning, network provisioning, network assurance, and network operations and security.

With emerging powerful computing platforms on handheld devices and smartphones, major efforts are required to deploy a networked infrastructure that blends computing and communication technologies.

These ‘smart’ networks will allow operators to gain a better understanding of users, their preferences, and subscriptions as well as the devices, applications and content being utilized.

These networks include more than just infrastructure as they comprise of support systems that provide the flexibility needed to respond to changing user behavior and emerging business models. Smart networks need to be scalable in bandwidth, devices, signaling and analytics for inferring and communicating patterns in data.

We need to move from simple device management and connectivity to also supporting service delivery features such as monitoring, diagnostics, remote control, security management, application delivery and performance optimizing analytics. A seamless interaction is also required between network operators and providers, device manufacturers, communication module manufacturers, application providers and system integrators.

Devices may consist of Connected Consumer Electronic (CE) devices, mobile broadband routers, smart phones, and notebooks. And the different levels of connectivity which need to be managed include high reliability, differentiated best effort, prioritized internet, best effort internet and guaranteed connectivity.

A rethink of the telecom business is required for innovating on business processes, business models and the underlying infrastructure. This can be achieved by taking a holistic, systems level perspective in the design of networks.

Smart Network Design Engineering Guidelines

A formal systems engineering approach needs to be taken to design smart networks. Systems engineering is a discipline for seeing wholes and a framework for seeing interrelationships and patterns of change. It is a process which gathers all possible processes and interrelationships in an organized structure.

The smart networked system should be modeled from 4 perspectives. The functional perspective helps define the systems functional elements, their responsibilities and primary interactions. The information perspective that defines the way the architecture stores, manipulates, manages and distributes data and information. The deployment perspective helps describe the environment in which the system will be deployed, including the dependencies the system has on its run-time environment. And lastly, the operational perspective that defines how the system will be operated, administered and supported when running in its production environment.

Smart networked systems should be designed for security and privacy, performance and scalability, availability and resilience, and evolution and interoperability.