How to bend the IP cost curve in your favour, using software
With mobile data growth in Asia-Pacific averaging 30% a year, with the cost per bit for IP/MPLS routing networks in the region only decreasing 20% a year, according to Ovum, the most pressing problem to solve for IP networks today is not scaling bandwidth alone, but achieving sustainable operations. Additionally, ensuring whatever you add to your network is compatible with your existing architecture is essential.
To address these IP realities, Ciena has introduced Adaptive IPTM. Adaptive IP allows network operators to turn up only the essential IP capabilities required to support new applications while bolstering your network with cloud-like scale, disaggregated functionality, and automated intelligence. Together, this allows for a simpler, more streamlined IP connectivity leading to economies of scale.
Adaptive IP supports existing services and applications while setting the stage for new and emerging use cases, such as 5G and IoT.
Software’s role in maximizing your IP network’s potential
Adaptive IP is a use case of Ciena’s Adaptive Network™ architecture vision, which unites a disaggregated and programmable packet infrastructure with Software-Defined Networking (SDN)- based control and automation driven by machine learning-based analytics, fed by real-time network telemetry.
Here’s how software works within the Adaptive IP architecture:
Software control and automation:
New applications will require IP capabilities located at the edge of the network while dynamically providing scale and performance, as needed. This is best achieved by leveraging intelligent automation driven by streaming telemetry from highly instrumented network infrastructure. Blue Planet® Multi-Domain Service Orchestration (MDSO) enables this architectural shift with its centralized, software-defined control of multiple, multi-vendor domains.
In a legacy IP solution, an ever-increasing number of costly deployed hardware-based router platforms perform this task. In contrast, the software control and automation layer reduce node-based control plane signaling, making network infrastructure platforms to be far simpler and more cost-effective. You can achieve this with the Blue Planet SDN-based software platform.
Blue Planet Intelligent Automation operates in a multi-vendor, hybrid network environment, making it easy for any network provider to start their journey from a box-centric legacy IP approach to a simple, automated network design, efficiently supporting legacy services most while preparing for the next wave of applications requirements.
Analytics and intelligence:
The Adaptive IP solution leverages Ciena’s Blue Planet Analytics, which incorporates powerful machine learning capabilities to derive deep insights into any network—Ciena, third party, or hybrid. Built upon an open and extensible microservices-based architecture, the robust and flexible framework for collecting, processing, and storing network data facilitates innovative analytics-based applications.
A critical part of Ciena’s Adaptive IP solution is Blue Planet Route Optimization and Assurance (ROA), which fills a fundamental IP/MPLS management gap. With Blue Planet ROA, you can capture real-time telemetry from network elements, as well as from domain controllers and service orchestrators, such as Blue Planet MDSO, to provide network forensic capabilities. This visibility into the IP/MPLS network control plane allows you to see precisely how specific traffic traverses the Layer 3 IP network, and where performance can be optimized on an ongoing basis. Engineered for intelligent network automation, Blue Planet ROA integrates with Blue Planet MDSO to provide powerful analytics and orchestration capabilities and accelerates the transition toward an Adaptive IP network.
Most network providers have multiple inventory systems in place to support their various service offerings and lines of business. However, because traditional inventory systems operate offline, and were developed primarily to support circuit-based physical networks, they provide a static and fragmented view of service and network resources. Service providers are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and launch more software-centric on-demand services to meet customers’ expectations. To address, this with Ciena’s Blue Planet Inventory, you can have a unified, dynamic, and end-to-end view of all your network and service resources, to streamline your operational processes.
Adaptive IP: An open IP network architecture, from access to metro
Adaptive IP is Ciena’s innovative new network architecture specifically created to cost-effectively deliver IP-based connectivity, from access to metro networks. As it is a use case of Ciena’s Adaptive Network vision, it leverages software control, automation, analytics, intelligence, and inventory in an open manner, meaning network operators can pick-and-choose the building blocks required for their specific business needs. Adaptive IP is fully compatible with existing IP networks and will improve visibility, network performance, and automation, as you transition to the Adaptive Network.
