Cable 2020 Foundations

Author: Doug Barney

Alcatel-Lucent joins Nokia following successful exchange of shares. Find out more

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Introduction ............................................................................................................................3

Chapter 1: Leveraging Your Wi-Fi Assets ................................................................................6

Chapter 2: Realities of Virtualization ........................................................................................9

Chapter 3: Experience is Everything .....................................................................................18

Chapter 4: Getting Your Network Fit For Cable 2020 ............................................................29

Related Content ...................................................................................................................43

With the combined strengths of Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, we are an innovation leader in the technologies that connect people and things. Together, we have the capabilities and global scale to meet the extraordinary demands and opportunities of a world where everyone and everything are increasingly connected. We’re creating a new type of network that’s intelligent, efficient, and secure, and advancing the technologies that tap its power through smart devices and sensors.

Table of Contents

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Introduction

A Changing Landscape for Cable OperatorsBy Steve Davidson, Cable MSO Strategic Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future” – J.F. Kennedy

This couldn’t be more true for MSOs, who have made a healthy living for the past couple of decades based around the control of the home via content subscription packages and the television set.

TV consumption is changing. Time spent watching traditional TV is steadily declining, whilst on-demand takes hold fast with OTT companies such as Netflix streaming huge amounts of SVOD content. As operators adjust, new bundles and options start to appear. Of particular interest is the younger demographic (<35) who currently subscribe to as much OTT streamed service as they do traditional TV subscriptions.

This group of users also is trending towards mobile/tablet viewing, as highlighted by the Accenture Digital Media Survey which found a 33% drop in utilizing the TV as the first screen for the 14-17 year demographic.

In terms of TV quality itself – ultra high definition TV will become the norm and nearly dominate sales by 2020 according to strategy analytics.

“We’re still in the first minutes of the first day of the Internet revolution” – Scott Cook

Industry analysts agree that global consumer internet traffic, of which about 80% is IP video, has increased more than fivefold in the past 5 years. Bell labs indicate that this trend will continue and increase nearly threefold by 2020 but could surpass four times current values depending upon the amount of innovation applied to consumer services in areas such as internet of things (IoT) or immersive experiences. There is a continuous push for higher speed access as data usage explodes.

MSOs were quick to leverage this trend and have enjoyed a clear broadband leadership over recent years thanks to DOCSIS capabilities offered on their DS3.0 networks. Many have chosen to:

• Upgrade at least part of the network to DS3.1 in an attempt to squeeze more bandwidth out of existing cable runs

• Strategize on architectural changes to push fiber deeper into the network - as the whole world talks about Gigabit networks and connected homes

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This is increasingly important for MSOs as other operators (or anyone with a fiber network) are rapidly improving reach and bandwidth capabilities with FTTX and G.fast technologies. MSOs will not be able to easily maintain their broadband leadership against encroaching FTTX and it is now common practice in MSOs to also look to deploy fiber for greenfield extensions in preparation for cable 2020 and beyond.

In terms of mobile data, MSOs have already invested in Wi-Fi® and now look to scale and monetize this technology further, making “Wi-Fi First” a hot cable industry voice and data discussion topic. Wi-Fi usage accounts for a very high percentage of mobile data consumption, mainly centered around the home environment (40%) and then nomadically in public areas (20%) and venues (20%) for example. Connectivity on the move and in-between the aforementioned is achieved via cellular (20%).

MSOs realize that subscribers require always on mobile connectivity, and that mobility is a required compliment to fixed services and affects loyalty. Mobile enabled MSOs will notice an important difference in churn levels of their quad play subscribers versus other customers.

As Wi-Fi usage ramps up, there is an increased focus on capabilities to manage voice and data connectivity between Wi-Fi and cellular. Also issues related to the quality of home Wi-Fi connections, which can affect – amongst other things – the video streaming experience and hence the MSO brand.

In the residential space, a plethora of connectivity, online content, advertising, and consumer product companies are vying for consumer attention. New types of differentiators and revenue sources are required.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi

In the search for new revenues and customer retention tactics, other industry trends are being considered by MSOs. The Internet of Things is a hot topic across the industry that could become a lucrative focus area for MSOs once standards are in place and clear business models can be established. Business insights and big data collection is another area that MSOs can benefit from in the same way as large OTT providers are doing today – with personalized offers and discovery, proactive service assurance, etc.

B2B is another new revenue candidate. Enterprise spending increases and new ways of working, especially for the small to medium segments, creates a window of opportunity for MSOs with new offers centered around fixed and mobile connectivity bundles enhanced with services and enterprise applications. MSOs may leverage virtualization technologies to create differentiated offers that align with enterprise customer needs.

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” – Stephen Hawking

As MSOs strive to maintain their lead, as they adapt and grow within this environment, imperatives such as “build quality into everything we do”, “enable my network for business in 2020”, and “grasp opportunity and create new revenue streams” become increasingly important.

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This also implies an enhanced focus on key projects, each bringing with them their particular set of challenges such as:

• Evolving the video offer and delivery capabilities. This requires being prepared for new content, new formats and devices, new IP delivery models, new consumption models and unpredictable scale.

• Evolving cable access and transport networks for Gigabit service delivery. Having the right technology investments in place to ensure the gigabit home and enhanced business services become a reality.

• Delivering quality wireless/mobile services. Having the correct tools in place and core capabilities to ensure brand worthy home Wi-Fi experiences and hybrid wireless access connectivity.

• Grasping growth opportunities in commercial services (e.g., SMB, enterprise). Building capabilities at cloud speed to appeal to the enterprise new way of working.

• Improving operations and customer experience. Includes focus improvements in Net Promoter Score (NPS) /customer satisfaction, creating the capability to drive service agility as well as OPEX reduction via simplification and consolidation of operations.

In this e-book, we’ve gathered a series of short articles on key MSO focus areas. These topics will help build the foundation for cable 2020 and a continued leadership role for MSOs in the new era of info-entertainment and connectivity.

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Chapter 1: Leveraging Your Wi-Fi Assets

Cable MSO Have an Advantage with Wi-Fi First – For NowBy Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

If you haven’t noticed, Wi-Fi is overtaking cellular as the primary wireless data connection.

Wi-Fi surpassed cellular as the primary carrier of wireless traffic in 2014, according to Alcatel-Lucent, and it is expected to carry more than half of all wireless traffic within the next two years.

This is because of video largely. Roughly 55 percent of smartphone owners and 61 percent of tablet owners use TV apps on their devices at least once per month, according to Parks Associates. Wi-Fi is the better choice for such high-bandwidth content, and overall there are roughly 10 billion devices worldwide that connect via Wi-Fi.

This presents opportunities for cable MSOs. As noted in an Alcatel-Lucent strategic white paper, Multiple System Operator (MSO) Wi-Fi: Solutions to enhance the connected lifestyle, cable operators have the opportunity to be first-movers in the global migration to Wi-Fi First if they move fast, given their Wi-Fi infrastructure.

“Originally, MSOs positioned their residential Wi-Fi devices as conduits just for connecting devices to the Internet,” noted a TechZine posting by Nicholas Cadwgan, Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent titled, Cable MSO Wi-Fi enhances customer lifestyles. “But now Wi-Fi has become the primary home networking medium.”

In many cases cable MSO’s residential Wi-Fi gateway also is serving as a hotspot for public access in community Wi-Fi applications.

This is important, because community Wi-Fi can help cable MSOs lead the way in the emerging voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) trend where calls and rich communications services seamlessly work across both cellular and Wi-Fi connections.

“The emergence of VoWi-Fi technology gives MSOs another opportunity to use their residential APs to deliver a comprehensive package of advanced rich service experiences to their subscribers,” noted Cadwgan. “By launching a VoWi-Fi service that leverages their deployed Wi-Fi infrastructures, MSOs can allow consumers to choose Wi-Fi as their primary option for voice calls, as well as all other data, video, and multimedia services.”

Cable MSOs have little time to waste, however; cellular carriers have spotted the trend, and 18 of the top 20 cellular carriers worldwide now have publicly committed to deploying Wi-Fi hotspots for VoWi-Fi and things like improved mobile video experience.

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Full integration of small cells with hotspots has yet to be achieved by cellular carriers, but that is coming soon.

So now is the time for cable MSOs to grab the first-mover advantage when it comes to Wi-Fi. The competition is advancing fast.

Cable MSOs Can Benefit from Wi-Fi First TrendBy Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

Cable multiple service operators have an opportunity in the Wi-Fi First trend.

In the previous article we looked at the emergence of voice-over-Wi-Fi and why it holds out so much promise in general. Attention is now turned to the strategy of maximizing the opportunity. Focus is on In particular, converged cable MSOs that have been acquired by or that have acquired a MNO and MSOs that offer mobility service bundles. These extend standard fixl6ed services for content and communications through a full mobile virtual network operator (F-MVNO) who are in the best position to benefit from Wi-Fi First, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent article by Steve Davidson, Cable MSO Wi-Fi First offers unique opportunity.

“A Wi-Fi First strategy can incrementally benefit MSOs that have access to both Wi-Fi and cellular assets, noted Davidson on the article. “With these assets, they can provide wireless broadband service based on an unlicensed/licensed mobility scheme built on Wi-Fi, and LTE, or 3G.”

A Wi-Fi First strategy enabled MSOs to keep customers connected while reaping substantial benefits. Alcatel-Lucent has found that up to 65 percent of voice calls on an F-MVNO enabled MSO network are made in the home environment alone, according to Davidson, and indoor coverage by macro cells often is an issue due to building insulation and the move from 900 MHz 2G to 2100 MHz 3G and 2600 and 1800 MHz LTE.

MSOs can direct mobile data and voice traffic to and from the cellular radio access networks to their Wi-Fi radio access networks to optimize capital spend on access networks and lower the total cost of ownership. They also can optimize the costs relating to cellular connectivity by what is known as Wi-Fi offload.

“Bell Labs Consulting indicates that MSOs can glean significant savings from data steering alone,” noted Davidson.

Wi-Fi calling in some cases also can provide reduced setup times compared with 2G/3G circuit-switched voice, and MSOs can gain substantive savings on national roaming provider costs and international roaming costs through Wi-Fi First.

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“They can enable video call steering from cellular to Wi-Fi access, which saves capacity in their cellular networks,” said Davidson. “They can deliver HD audio and they can offer enhanced presence applications.”

Wi-Fi First mobile connections are going mainstream, and MSOs are in a good position to take advantage of the trend. In our last posting more details on why there is some urgency in moving first as well as fast will be explored.

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Chapter 2: Realities of Virtualization

Network-Wide NFV Use Gives the Advantage to Cable MSOsBy Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

Multiple service cable operators are in a strong market position thanks to their fiber and wireless infrastructures that can be put to good use delivering high-speed broadband services, as we noted in a TMCnet article.

Here we look at how fully taking advantage of this infrastructure requires network functions virtualization (NFV). The reasons are put forth in a recent white paper by Alcatel-Lucent, The cable cloud mandate: The essential role of network functions virtualization in cable, which highlights why and how, “the cable NFV advantage greatly depends on operators’ ability to execute a vast range of functions at the edge.”

A virtualized flexible cable edge offers three advantages for MSOs: It minimizes the space and power consumed by equipment, it enables operators to handle the complexities of managing an ever-expanding array of services on a personalized basis across an ever-expanding array of devices, and it puts these processes in sufficiently close proximity to achieve the extremely low latency thresholds essential to sustaining the highest levels of performance on virtualized CPE.

Understanding this, Alcatel-Lucent has developed a cable NFV framework that MSOs can use for a flexible edge.

The Alcatel-Lucent Virtual Service Router (VSR) software suite plays a fundamental role in bringing NFV to the cable edge. VSR, introduced in 2014, provides operators a way to eliminate the need for dedicated routers for each type of service and distribution facility by shifting routing functions to the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router, thereby separating the service layer from the access technology.

“By eliminating multiple IP aggregation layers, operators can deliver residential, commercial, wireless and network services with service awareness and differentiation over any access medium, including DOCSIS, PON, direct fiber, and carrier Wi-Fi,” noted the white paper.

A second innovation that helps MSOs is the Virtual Residential Gateway (vRGW) capability, which lets the virtualized cable edge support virtualization of the residential gateway functions within the cable edge. An initial application for this is residential Wi-Fi.

The Alcatel-Lucent solution also provides cable operators the back-office tools essential to executing operations, such as data aggregation and advanced analytics capabilities that enable operators to ensure that every function in the virtualized environment is performing as needed. It is a NFV-optimized

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subset of Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform, and comprises a modularized, fully automated and programmable operations support system (OSS) that can be employed to dynamically identify and track network resources, fulfill orders, assure services, and facilitate self-healing with automated recovery, predictive management and other processes.

Cable operators may have a leg up, but they need the right technology in place to take advantage of their infrastructure strength.

The Case For a Virtualized Residential GatewayBy Enrique Hernandez-Valencia, Consulting Director, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent Arnold Jansen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Alcatel-Lucent Luc Ongena, Senior Consultant, Bell Labs Consulting Thomas Weishaeupl, Senior Expert, Bell Labs Consulting

A virtualized residential gateway (vRGW) moves some functions that are currently deployed on the residential gateway into the network cloud, along with centralized management and control. This lets service providers introduce a more simplified bridged residential gateway (BRG) with home device management functionalities and per-device service assurance and control capabilities.

Consumers can use home device management to manage service usage, QoS, and security policies for each of their connected home devices. Most importantly for service providers, a study by Bell Labs estimates that network operating cost savings of 20-40% can be realized on service assurance, fulfillment, and lifecycle management, depending on market conditions.

In combination with additional savings on subscriber acquisition cost, total cost savings can amount to a profit margin improvement of 10-29%.

Making it simple the smart way

If you have become so complex that traditional implementations impede service velocity and agility, you’ll also have a residential gateway. It’s the little plastic box with blinking lights that connects your PC and home network to your Internet service provider’s network.

Although it may seem unassuming and cheap, the residential gateway is a demarcation device that plays an important role in delivering the service. It represents a large slice of service fulfillment, assurance, and lifecycle management costs. It packs a ton of features and likely required a technician to come to your house to install it. And if it doesn’t work properly or you want to upgrade to higher access speeds or more service features, it will most likely require another visit to fix or replace it.

Cloud-based applications and rich media content drive an increasing demand for access speeds of 100 Mbps and up. A plethora of user devices and gadgets are being connected in the digital home network, and the transition to IPv6 is well underway.

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As a result, in-home residential gateways have become so complex that traditional implementations impede service velocity and agility. Service providers must juggle an increasing number of hardware makes, models, and versions and struggle to maintain a consistent and customer friendly service experience. Costs and complexity is increasing while subscriber growth is stagnating, and average revenue per user is declining steadily.

Figure 1. Virtualized residential gateway

When we move functions like IP routing, NAT, firewall, and DHCP into the network cloud (Figure 1), it doesn’t remove the need for a residential gateway device at the customer premises. But it becomes simpler and easier to operate, maintain, and troubleshoot services.

Good for customers and great for business

A simpler residential gateway at the customer premises has far reaching consequences on operational complexity, cost, and profitability. As stated previously, Bell Labs estimates up to 40% on operating cost savings. Here’s the breakdown of these savings per cost category:

Service fulfillment: 7-12% cost reduction Truck rolls can easily represent over 80% of service fulfillment cost.

• A simpler residential gateway and extended auto-installation capabilities lead to faster end point turn-ups and fewer truck rolls to address service activation issues.

• Leveraging network-based service capabilities leads to faster rollout and turn up of new service features and fewer truck rolls to address service upgrade requirements.

Service assurance: 63-67% cost reduction Service provider data shows that 30-40% of trouble tickets are related to network layer 3-7 issues. These can be resolved better by leveraging a centralized vRGW platform in combination with home device management capabilities.

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• The vRGW model results in a simpler physical RGW at the customer premises. This results in fewer issues related to the RGW itself, an increased success rate of first support calls, and fewer truck rolls to resolve RGW issues.

• Superior analytics reduces the number of customer support calls since more issues can be resolved prior to a customer complaint. There are fewer incidents requiring human intervention and a positive customer experience.

Life cycle management: ~66% cost reduction Although life cycle management costs are relatively small compared to fulfillment and assurance costs, enhanced service velocity and agility improve service innovation, time to market, and revenue.

• Device management costs are lower. The vRGW model reduces the number of physical RGW variants that need to be maintained and stocked, since a subset of functional requirements is moved into the network.

• New service features can now be introduced in a centralized manner through vRGW feature upgrades. This reduces pre-deployment tests required and enables a fast and consistent introduction of new service features.

Table 1 shows the key performance indicators that are improved by virtualizing the residential gateway.

Table 1. Improving KPIs with a virtualized residential gateway

A combination of an improved customer experience and better lifecycle management offers measurable improvements in customer loyalty and time-to-revenue for service deployment. Customers stay longer with their current contract, are less inclined to switch providers, and less effort is required to retain existing or acquire new customers.

As a result, service providers can enjoy additional savings of 12-37% on sales and marketing cost, in combination with improved time-to-revenue and revenue retention.

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Besides operating cost savings that contribute to the bottom line, a virtualized residential gateway delivers measurable structural process improvements in customer experience, service delivery, and assurance. This facilitates a more innovative, agile, and responsive organization that is better equipped for success as market conditions evolve.

MSO toolkit: Moving to Virtualized FunctionsBy Steve Davidson, Cable MSO strategic marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Like other operators, cable MSOs need to consider virtualized functions and new architectures for B2B services to succeed in the cloud era. These are elements of the toolkit we introduced in a TechZine article. It’s a toolkit of concepts and technologies to help the MSO network adapt to new requirements and become more programmable. And in this article, we’ll look at real-world examples.

THE MOVE TO VIRTUALIZED FUNCTIONS

The industry has invested quite a lot of effort in network functions virtualization (NFV). What began as a concept – can we virtualize a network function? – is now a reality. We have really taken a lot of the functionality that would have typically been delivered on a specialized hardware box (a router, for example) and virtualized them.

Figure 2. Virtualizing hardware

Equipment vendors have begun this process, and in some cases functions are implemented and ready to be purchased and installed. The virtual route reflector is a great example. This is largely a control plane technology, so it makes a lot of sense to run that on a server and we get a big performance gain in doing so, utilizing the additional cores and capacity that you get on a dedicated server platform. But not everything needs to be virtualized.

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The industry’s trying to figure out which functions actually perform better on a server versus running on specialized hardware. Think about this. We have virtualized things, put them on servers, and already have customers saying “Hey you know, for some of these functions, it would be really nice if we could get some specialized hardware running in these servers to accelerate these functions”. But if we take a virtualized function, say a virtualized routing function, and put it on specialized hardware – what you have effectively done is once again created a router.

In reality we have a continuum in terms of the hardware upon which we want to run these different network functions. It really depends upon the network function itself, what you are trying to do, to be able to select the right target hardware platform.

A HARDWARE CONTINUUM

On one end of the hardware continuum would be something like a hard coded merchant silicon based system. Datacenter switches are a great example of this. They are really designed to move a specific type of packet with specific headers and do that at very high scale and very low cost, with very minimal feature sets.

On the other end of the continuum, where we typically talk about NFV, are general purpose processors running network functions that are virtualized. You get a lot of flexibility and can run a lot of different things in that environment. You can do very complex packet processing tasks, though you will ultimately sacrifice performance. You are running on a processing platform that isn’t optimized for that specific function, so there is a performance trade off.

In the middle of the continuum are other types of specialized hardware. These could be network processor based systems, like the kind we use to build routers, all based on network processor families. What the network processor really gives you is the best of both worlds.

It’s like having a general purpose processor system that has been optimized for the specific task of forwarding packets – doing packet look-ups, incrementing counters, all the memory transactions that go with that. Network processors are designed to do that in a flexible way. It’s actually running software. There is microcode running inside that processor, so you can add features to enhance the system over time.

We all will continue to work with this continuum, as there is no one size that fits all. There’s a wide variety of hardware infrastructures that meet the various needs of these applications and functions and that’s how operators are evolving their networks.

Branching out with SDN

Along with virtualized functions, software defined networking (SDN) helps operators address future network requirements. One example of an opportunity is in the enterprise VPN services market.

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In today’s market, the vast majority of VPNs are still based on MPLS technology. Enterprises in general, but especially high end enterprises, typically look to purchase MPLS VPNs. There are good reasons for this, such as very high SLAs. And they can carry different types of traffic with differing QoS levels highly efficiently across multiple sites.

But within the enterprise environment we are starting to see some of the trends we already discussed – lots more video traffic, more bandwidth requests. Whether their employees are watching entertainment videos during their lunch hour or training videos as part of their job functions, the result is a huge increase in traffic. And a lot of this being driven from the internet.

At this point, in the search for a cost effective solution, enterprises begin looking at over-the-top or do-it-yourself VPNs. They might buy a broadband pipe and begin to run their own VPNs on top of that by pinning up some secure IPSec tunnels.

Figure 3. The enterprise VPN market: Current state of affairs

This is really challenging the MPLS VPN market. We see it as a great opportunity, particularly for MSOs, since most cable operators have never rolled out Layer 3 MPLS VPNs, an area dominated by incumbent telcos. An SDN based VPN is a great alternative to do-it-yourself VPNs and will be an attractive product offer for MSOs.

OPTIONS FOR VPN CONNECTIVITY

Let’s look at how we can apply SDN and NFV technology to address this market need for higher scale, higher capacity VPN connectivity services. There is not a 1 size fits all strategy, but following are 3 alternatives that we frequently discuss with our customers.

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1. Move and virtualize CPE functionality

The 1st idea is to move the CPE functionality out of the physical box at the customer site, virtualize it, and run it in servers in the cloud or in a data center.

Figure 4. Move CPE functionality

This is nice, if you can keep the CPE in place and start tunneling at Layer 2 to get all of the services and functionality implemented back in the cloud.

The real drivers for this are simplification from an operations perspective on what goes out in the branch, and you can now instantiate all the services including value added services from within the cloud. As you are tunneling the traffic you can also potentially run that over an internet connection as well as an MPLS helping to achieve scale. This concept is similar to that currently being contemplated for virtual residential gateways.

2. Virtualize functionality at the customer premises

With an inverse approach, we know we can virtualize functions, run them in a VM, and drop it into some general purpose compute. We therefore can put a box in the customer premises that is effectively an extension of the NFV infrastructure that is managed and run by the MSO.

Figure 5. Virtualize at customer premises

So we have the ability to deploy the same CPE virtualized functions, but now it’s packaged in software that we are dropping onto a device that’s part of the cloud infrastructure but located at the customer site.

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At the end of the day the 1st 2 approaches are essentially the same – it’s just a question of where you are implementing the functionality.

3. Move to virtualized network services

The 3rd approach is to rethink how the service is constructed. Since SDN and NFV technologies are really concepts, we have to think about how we apply these concepts.

Figure 6. Virtualized network services

In this model, we are splitting the CPE function apart. We’re running the control function from within the MSO cloud, but we want to do the forwarding out of the customer premises. This lets us instantiate security there and we can set up the secure tunnels, but all the policy and value added services are managed from the central location. So we get the rapid service provisioning that comes with software but get to do some of the functionality out of the customer site.

We call this approach Virtualized Network Services and believe it makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, this runs inherently over any IP pipe – your own broadband service or a 3rd party broadband service.

As the industry moves into the cloud era, amidst all the apparent complexities and confusion of virtualization, programmability, and network evolution, there are plenty of opportunities. Cable operators can incorporate virtualized functions, consider the hardware continuum, and leverage SDN to unlock the true potential of their broadband infrastructure.

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Chapter 3: Experience is Everything

Cable MSO Transform the Customer ExperienceBy Nicholas Cadwgan, marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Success for cable operators will depend on how well they can transform the customer experience (CX) as they strive to deliver new services to residential and commercial markets.

Cable operators can improve customer satisfaction by addressing back-office, device management, and service assurance requirements that contribute to a far better experience for customers. The boost in customer satisfaction will help stem losses in pay TV subscribers to create a more positive outlook on Wall Street and in boardrooms.

Fundamental to CX transformation, is cable operators’ ability to implement a customer experience management (CEM) platform that delivers the intelligence, scope, and efficiency to manage and optimize today’s CX.

Keeping up with CX requirements

As operators execute on new opportunities, including TV Everywhere (TVE), MSO Wi-Fi, smart home (the Internet of Things), and managed commercial services, they must evolve from old, siloed service management and customer care approaches to keep up with CX requirements.

Combined with the growing use of cloud-based resources, operators’ responsibilities for maintaining customer satisfaction have expanded to a broader range of devices, network elements and service categories than ever before.

Today’s market conditions dictate a comprehensive, holistic approach to ensuring superior customer experience and accelerating service velocity across multiple departments.

It’s not enough for operators to compile, analyze and format data across all service categories to provide customer service representatives and support personnel instant access to all information relevant to any issue. To drive go-to-market efficiencies and improve performance throughout the organization, they must be able to extend the benefits of:

• Advanced user awareness• Device management• Actionable analytics• Dynamic automated operations

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Customer satisfaction: Room for improvement

According to recent research by the Temkin Group, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and JD Power, there is much room for customer satisfaction improvement among Internet and pay TV providers.

For example, Temkin Group’s Q3 2014 survey of 10,000 US consumers’ opinions about goods and services supplied by 283 companies across 20 industries registered the lowest ranking average Net Promoter Score (NPS) for pay TV providers[1].

The average score for Internet service providers was just one rung higher in the 19th position. (An NPS reflects a respondent’s willingness to recommend a provider of goods and services to other people based on a scale of 1 to 10.)

Emerging services and opportunity

Customer satisfaction surveys underscore the immediacy of the cable CEM opportunity. However the full scope of what needs to be done is best understood in the context of the changes in emerging service offerings, including:

• TV Everywhere• Ubiquitous Wi-Fi access• The Internet of Things (smart home)• Managed commercial services

TV Everywhere (TVE) The anticipated CX impact from new initiatives is most evident in implementations of TVE services. In TVE, consumer engagement and a seamless, high-quality experience are significant issues. Much of the reason for the lack of engagement comes back to CX. Research highlights everything from time-consuming sign-in processes and poor performance to viewing delays as reasons for lack of user engagement.

Ubiquitous MSO Wi-Fi access To capitalize on the Wi-Fi potential, operators must enhance CEM to address new complexities in service assurance and customer service. This includes making sure everything from bandwidth and device management to providing confirmation that authentication systems, personalized apps, ad placements, and e-commerce commitments to commercial partners are working as expected.

The Internet of Things (IoT) Looking beyond the expanding TV service domain, the CEM challenge becomes even greater with the onset of next-generation smart home services. In this space, the connectivity of appliances and devices of every description will dictate a highly versatile approach to meeting consumer expectations.

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Recent research underscores the IoT service opportunity for cable and other network service providers. ABI Research, for example, predicts that nearly 30 percent of North American households will have a managed smart home automation system installed by 2019[2].

Commercial services Cable operators are transitioning from delivering commercial-grade high-speed data and voice services at the low end of the SMB spectrum to offering more sophisticated managed services to larger companies.

To be successful in this market, operators must be able to dynamically deliver the set of services and functionalities with new levels of automation that each customer requires in terms of:

• Provisioning• Service activation• Performance assurance• Care management

The challenge will also be delivering these functionalities in conjunction with diverse needs across multiple customer locations.

Moving to the cloud

Virtualization of multiple processes running on data center hardware will enable accelerated service velocity. This will allow operators to move ever more functionalities in consumer and commercial services to the cloud.

As they do, they must be able to seamlessly incorporate the monitoring and analysis of those cloud-based processes into their frameworks.

4 fundamentals of a comprehensive CX program

As technology innovations drive shifts in consumer behavior and open new service opportunities, operators must start eliminating pain points. This includes any obstacles that will impede their ability to launch and provide adequate care and quality assurance for those services. In a market crowded with competitors, the difference between success and failure may come down to who can provide the best and most differentiated customer experience.

1. Connected home and device management If cable operators want to realize the goals of a next-generation CX program, they need an entirely new way of bringing full-fledged device management into the new service domain. This means operators must have comprehensive control of and visibility into every device and every service delivered to those devices from their networks.

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Recent advances in device management, embodied in the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 standard and its extensions, have been embedded into the cable customer premises equipment (CPE), including residential and commercial gateways.

In addition, by leveraging the proxy management capabilities of TR-069-enabled CPE, monitoring and management functionalities are available for any devices that are connected to these gateways over standardized protocols on wireless and fixed line networks.

2. Better customer service performance Customer care and service assurance are frequently inadequate to subscribers’ needs. At the most basic level, long delays in answering calls in help centers often lead to abandoned call rates several times greater than the industry best-practices average.

Once calls are answered, the time it takes for customer service representatives (CSRs) to get answers to questions — if CSRs able to find answers at all — increases customer dissatisfaction as well as cost-per-call averages.

A CEM program designed to address these issues requires implementation of mechanisms and procedures that allow operators to more quickly resolve subscriber issues through all care touch points, including:

• Help desks• Interactive voice response (IVR) systems• Self-help portals

To provide CSRs all the information they need to reduce resolution time, the new CEM platform must have powerful analytics capabilities in conjunction with data-gathering that reaches across all devices and systems.

The platform must also address delays in service activation, compounded by the introduction of ever more services. When taking new service orders, CSRs must have a single-interface access to all of the provisioning and billing triggers associated with all services and special offers. They must also be able to confirm the service is activated as required once the order is taken.

3. Accelerating marketing strategies As operators overcome these limitations from the help-desk perspective, they must also be able to extend the benefits of rapid service activation and performance awareness to other departments.

Marketing personnel, for example, must quickly activate new tiers, usage-based pricing and packaging models, free trial and reduced-price incentives, and value-added applications. And they must be able to tap the data resources to track the performance not only of new services but also new pricing models and incentive offers.

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4. Network consolidation and multi-access modes Consolidation of operations at regional and national levels has created a pressing need for an integrated multi-service management capability. This allows engineering departments to immediately gauge how new technology strategies are impacting service performance in all locations on all devices.

Analytics systems must be able to track and identify issues based on a comprehensive set of information relevant to whatever access link a particular user is on. Without requiring CSRs and technicians to go to different dashboards dedicated to each type of access link.

As with all other aspects of the CX system, the platform must be able to aggregate and present all relevant information from a user-centric, as opposed to technology-centric, point of view.

Ready to transform the customer experience

A CEM platform that fulfills these fundamentals will sustain customer satisfaction and optimize the customer experience well into the future.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Management Platform (Motive CEM) provides cable operators all essential CEM program support. Motive CEM fully engages all stakeholders in the planning, development, delivery, assurance, and customer care and support for all services across all devices and network access points.

Footnote

[1] Temkin Group, Net Promoter Score Benchmark Study, October 2014

[2] TABI Research, Smart Home, STB & Home Networks Market, June 2014

Delivering a Quality Cable MSO Wi-Fi ExperienceBy Nicholas Cadwgan, marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Cable MSO Wi-Fi technology has emerged as a key component of a cable MSO operator’s business vision. It gives them the technology and solutions they need to start implementing their wireless broadband strategies.

As noted in TechZine, deployed residential Wi-Fi APs let cable MSOs move 1st in the shift to a Wi-Fi First broadband experience (see Cable MSO Wi-Fi enhances customer lifestyles). And as 1st movers, they can capitalize on an emerging industry trend and create new business opportunities and revenue streams (see Cable MSO Wi-Fi First offers unique opportunity).

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Network assets enable 1st mover advantage

In addition to their deployed residential APs, some cable MSOs already have a variety of Wi-Fi hotspot deployments that provide:

• Hotspot urban coverage• Public venue coverage for large public spaces such as stadiums or stations• Community Wi-Fi coverage based on the extension of residential APs with a second service

set identifier, otherwise known as a home spot And some MSOs have also invested in, or have access to, cellular spectrum that lets them extend advanced broadband services outside of their network footprint.

Deliver service efficiently

To leverage these assets and reinforce their MSO Wi-Fi strategy, cable MSOs must meet several requirements in the home and beyond.

Obviously, service is important. To succeed with a MSO Wi-Fi strategy, cable MSOs must scale their portfolios of residential and commercial advanced broadband services to ensure ubiquitous availability across all service areas.

Providing service that meets user expectations requires a high level of performance. This can only be achieved through end-to-end analytics insight, control and management of the service to the end devices.

Enable a high quality experience

Beyond the technical capabilities of the network, an MSO Wi-Fi strategy must also deliver an optimal user experience. To do that, cable MSOs need the ability to:

• Streamline provisioning and activation across all networks and all Wi-Fi connections• Enable a fully integrated voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) experience with the means to dynamically

provision feature enhancements on a per-user basis• Personalize all services dynamically to maximize ease of use, discovery, feature

enhancements, and monetization opportunities per-session and device• Provide superior customer service for ordering, trouble resolution, and upsell initiatives through

customer service representatives and self-help portals

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Manage and optimize the home environment

Given cable MSOs’ history, a likely insertion point for an MSO Wi-Fi strategy is around the home where Wi-Fi usage is most intense. This is where cable MSOs have an incentive to deliver more services, higher network performance, and robust VoWi-Fi capabilities. It’s also the best place to provide accelerated service provisioning, more efficient customer care, and a better customer experience.

But in today’s connected home, advanced broadband services combine with a multitude of Internet-ready devices to create a challenging environment for both cable MSOs and consumers to manage. Fortunately, comprehensive MSO Wi-Fi solutions are available that address both service and experience requirements.

The most effective options provide the information needed to:

• Tailor services and features to each user’s unique needs and interests• Quickly identify problems• Trigger actions to resolve those problems

These solutions can provide direct control over every device. They aggregate all the data needed to maintain awareness of session performance and user behavior. And they offer advanced analytics that can be leveraged to deliver new levels of customer care and a more personalized experience in a multi-device environment.

With the right MSO Wi-Fi solution, cable MSOs can help manage the home environment. They can deliver a high-quality customer experience that inspires loyalty, generates up-sell opportunities, and attracts new customers.

Virtualize the residential gateway

A new residential service delivery architecture is also needed to accelerate time to market with new advanced broadband services and enable operational efficiencies. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) techniques provide cable MSOs with an opportunity to create that architecture.

By leveraging NFV solutions, cable MSOs can migrate to a dynamic, orchestrated and distributed cloud architecture that provides significant benefits around service innovation and time to market. They can achieve new operational efficiencies. And they can reduce the total cost of ownership of their networks.

MSO Wi-Fi scalability

Virtualization also makes it more cost-effective for cable MSOs to extend Wi-Fi capabilities across all points of connection, both within and outside their networks.

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Solutions are available that allow cable MSOs to do this and scale to deliver highly personalized advanced broadband services across millions of APs inside and outside homes, offices and public venues. The best solutions allow cable MSOs to dynamically manage these services as users move from one device and one location to the next or where required between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

To make this possible, an MSO Wi-Fi solution needs to allow cable MSOs to extend their advanced service capabilities in a highly scalable common operations model across all their access networks, including hybrid fiber coax networks, passive optical networks, and switched fiber links. Therefore MSO Wi-Fi solutions must support a number of tunneling protocols that connect Wi-Fi residential gateways (RGWs) to virtual RGWs or WLAN gateways.

Soft Generic Routing Encapsulation has emerged as one of the industry’s leading choices for this protocol. It is now embedded in chipsets used in RGWs and deployed externally in Wi-Fi APs and controllers supplied by leading industry vendors. As a result cable MSOs will not be impeded by fixed access network dichotomies where costs and inefficiencies can slow deployment.

Deliver community Wi-Fi

Extending network capabilities beyond the home to provide community Wi-Fi is also important. To enable this service with their networks, cable MSOs need to make RGWs a shared network resource. This should be supported with network architecture elements that enable integration and management of public and private user traffic in RGWs and across the whole network.

The key to this is the WLAN gateway. Cable MSOs now have access to highly scalable, resilient WLAN gateways that support the required advanced capabilities, including authentication, subscriber management, billing and anchoring of user devices.

These gateways also provide:

• High bandwidth and aggregation• Granular traffic conditioning• High-density subscriber management• Interworking with a cellular mobile packet cores• High availability

They also need to provide per-subscriber, per-device, and per-application assurance, and management capabilities for value-added services.

Extend services across Wi-Fi and LTE/3G networks

Cable MSOs may also wish to consider extending their advanced broadband services through access to LTE and/or a packetized layer of 3G radio access networks. When adopting this service extension across multi-access network architecture, perhaps to support a Wi-Fi First oriented services strategy,

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they need to consider a range of areas such as mobility, security, and provisioning to ensure the continued delivery of a quality user experience.

For broad applicability, standards-based gateways and authentication/policy platforms are required to deliver secure access and seamless mobility between the Wi-Fi and LTE/3G networks.

Make the concept a reality

These and other technology solutions let cable MSOs make Wi-Fi a strategic business component -- with potential extension to a Wi-Fi First strategy. They allow cable MSOs to leverage their Wi-Fi deployments to maximum advantage today without waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up.

By moving 1st, cable MSOs can deliver a personalized user experience over high bandwidth connections. They can satisfy consumer and business demand for anytime, anywhere access to video, data, voice, and other value added services.

For more information on making an MSO Wi-Fi strategy a reality, and if desired the extension to embrace Wi-Fi First, please visit our Wi-Fi and mobility for cable MSOs info center.

Virtual Home Gateways Improve Customer ExperienceAlan Marks, Cable MSO strategic marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

With virtual home gateways, service providers can significantly improve the customer’s overall experience. The business value provided by these virtualized gateways is largely due to improved service quality and improved customer care. And along with increased customer satisfaction is higher ARPU, faster time-to-revenue, and reduced churn.

As highlighted in a virtual residential gateway blog, with a virtual home gateway service providers can streamline service delivery, turn up new and innovative services more efficiently, increase revenue, and lower CAPEX and OPEX for existing and new services. Virtualization of home gateway functions enables faster time to market for new services, including:

• Per device quality of service (QoS)• Parental controls• Firewall and security/threat protection

It also assures faster evolution to new technologies, such as IPv6. Just as important, virtualization enables a centralized management model that simplifies service deployment and troubleshooting.

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Streamlined service delivery

By virtualizing within the network cloud, the functions historically implemented in the residential gateway can be moved back into the network. This makes everything simpler for service providers and, more importantly, for customers.

Virtual home gateways, also called virtual residential gateways (vRGW), let service providers move subscribers to a single, virtual platform for all services. This eliminates the need to stock and deploy a variety of gateway devices to address different customer needs.

Fewer device variations means significant operational cost savings for operators. There are fewer configuration changes and firmware updates to apply as capabilities, features, and functions change over time. And when updates are needed, they can be easily applied without having to replace equipment or send technicians to resolve deployment or network issues.

More importantly, service fulfillment and customer care can be improved significantly. With a central, virtual environment, network-hosted RGW and home management functions are easier to manage compared to a decentralized deployment model where the RGW and other equipment in the home have to be accessed directly.

Centralized management with IP terminations of home equipment in the network gives service providers better visibility into a customer’s home network and all the devices connected to it. Among the benefits enabled are:

• Simplified service provisioning• More effective proactive and reactive remote management of service quality and performance• Fewer calls to the help desk• Increased likelihood that customer issues can be resolved during the first call

Increased customer control

All these benefits contribute to a better customer experience. But the vRGW approach improves that experience even further by giving customers greater and simpler control of their services. With a vRGW, service providers can introduce a unified cloud dashboard that lets customers easily apply per device QoS, opt for enhanced security such as firewalling or web filtering at the household or device level, or apply more effective parental control over services and Internet access.

Virtualization improves the bottom line

The shift to a virtual home gateway approach has to make good business sense, too. While delivering a better customer experience will increase customer loyalty and reduce churn, it’s always good to know just how that translates to the bottom line.

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Research and business modelling conducted by Bell Labs shows a strong business value to service providers that move to a vRGW network structure. Bell Labs analysis for a fixed line operator showed a 24% operational savings in fulfillment and assurance costs over a 5 year period. It also showed a 31% percent increase in revenue for new services as a result of the faster time to revenue enabled by vRGWs. And by improving the customer experience and reducing churn, service providers can further increase revenue by 10%, while saving 35% on ongoing subscriber acquisition costs.

That’s a compelling business case for virtual home gateways.

The Alcatel-Lucent solution

Alcatel-Lucent offers a complete virtual residential gateway solution for service providers, as shown in the figure.

Figure 7. The Alcatel-Lucent vRGW solution

To learn more about our vRGW architectures and how operators can improve the subscriber experience, please listen to this webinar on the topic “Improving the Customer Experience with Virtual Home Gateways”.

The webinar highlights how, by deploying virtual residential gateways, operators can enable both subscribers and the help desk to better manage the home network, connected devices, and advanced features delivered from the network.

• How improving the customer experience drives the business case for virtual home gateways• Characteristics of virtual residential gateways • How virtual residential gateways can simplify subscriber self care and improve assisted care

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Chapter 4: Getting Your Network Fit for Cable 2020

MSO Network Forecast is Partly CloudyBy Marcus Weldon, President of Bell Labs and Corporate Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent

Taking the position that CONTENT, CONNECTIVITY, and CLOUD are the 3 essential ingredients for the future success as a user experience provider, let’s map out the evolution of the MSO network.

CLOUD and CONNECTIVITY can be combined to minimize today´s network complexity, lack of dynamic scalability, and non-optimal cost structure. And also to unlock unfulfilled commercialization potential (new revenue). Moving to a cable edge cloud architecture and using technologies such as SDN and NFV will allow the creation of a network that is 100 times more powerful in terms of higher bandwidth and lower latency than today.

MSO network evolution

Today, MSOs generally run separate siloed networks as shown in Figure 1. They’re comprised of:

• HFC for residential and small business internet and video services• PON for greenfield deployments and high capacity business services• Some IP and carrier Ethernet business services and wireless (including Wi-Fi) backhaul• SDH/SONET for legacy voice and video network transport

These different networks are disjointed from an operations standpoint, which results in excess cost and lack of service continuity from one domain to another.

Figure 8. Today´s MSO network silos

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The (r)evolution

I predict that moving forward the following changes will be made by the leading MSOs to prepare for future success:

• Wireline and wireless access will converge into a single ultra-broadband access network, with wireline access infrastructure providing wireless connectivity to all people, places, and things.

• Real estate facilities such as hub offices will no longer be an OpEx burden, but rather a key enabler of cable edge cloud hosting.

• Customer premises equipment will increasingly only provide basic connectivity and (video) device control, with all enhanced services provided by ”virtual CPE” functions running in the edge cloud.

• The HFC network will migrate to Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) with virtualization of L2/3 functionality using edge cloud facilities and remote physical layer nodes, serving small user groups.

• Fiber-based technologies such as PON will increasingly be used to connect these remote nodes to the edge cloud control plane, to provide wireless (cellular and Wi-Fi) backhaul, and to provide business services.

• IP and optical transport layers will become more tightly integrated using SDN-approaches to provide lowest cost/bit metro and core transport with the scalability, agility and efficiencies necessary to deliver differentiated all-IP and cloud services.

• The shift from broadcast video to unicast will be driven by the arrival of cloud-DVR services and the human desire to consume personalized content anywhere, anytime on mobile devices. The resulting massive-scale CDN will be hosted in the same cable edge cloud.

• User-generated and artisanal content will become increasingly professional in quality and will begin to compete with large-scale content.

• OSS systems will be radically simplified, driven by the move to a single ”all IP” network infrastructure, with SDN and NFV support. This will massively accelerate service automation and innovation, and enable new IP and cloud-based business models.

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This new architecture is illustrated schematically in Figure 9.

Figure 9. MSO Future network with a cable flexible cloud edge

The winning solution

In summary, we see a future where the winners will be those who have a leading solution in the 3 key dimensions: CONTENT, CONNECTIVITY, and CLOUD. MSOs are well-positioned within this framework due to their leading CONTENT and CONNECTIVITY positions.

Figure 10. The 3 winning strategies

But since highly scalable, high performance connectivity solutions increasingly require the CLOUD, it is critical that MSOs quickly move to embrace edge cloud architectures. It will let them optimize their own services delivery and reduce COMPLEXITY, as well as unlock the potential for new revenue and COMMERCIALIZATION opportunities.

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Cable and Telco Network Optimization ToolkitBy Steve Davidson, Cable MSO strategic marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

As cable and telco operators plan for a connected future, they start to embrace cloud concepts such as SDN and NFV as part of their network optimization strategies. New business models and applications provide opportunities in this future, but how do operators ensure their position in new value chains? Like it or not, as customer demands increase and technology changes, we need to dramatically change the network infrastructure.

NEW DEMANDS ON THE NETWORK

Market trends set out the challenge that we have in building networks. Just in terms of devices and people connected, traffic growth has been phenomenal.

Figure 11. Market trends that affect the network

Video

In recent years, traffic growth has been largely driven by video, which places an increasing load on the network infrastructure. And video is changing. Catch-up TV, for example, shifts video from broadcast to unicast and delivers individual streams to subscribers -- which increases capacity requirements on the network infrastructure. How do we build networks that can scale to meet these new demands?

The Internet of Things

Besides more users coming on to the network, many more devices are driving up the amount of connectivity that’s required. And these new devices are no longer I/O bound.

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Humans deliver content to humans. Humans are I/O bound. But machines are not I/O bound. So with IoT and machine-to-machine communications, a new class of devices is collecting/sensing information that in theory can just continue to drive capacity forever.

Cloud computing

On the other side of the network are all the servers and services that you want to reach. Many of the forward looking applications today are cloud based applications, and we need to access these compute resources that are in the cloud infrastructure. The aforementioned increase in capacity is amplified further by cloud computing. We are seeing a huge amount of traffic currently going between servers across datacenters. And in the middle of all of this, ultimately, is the network.

We need the highest performance, lowest cost per bit, highest capable network infrastructure to connect all this together. The challenge is: How do we get there?

Unpredictability

We’ve previously been, in our industry, able to track network demands since they were largely driven by human behaviors. We had call models.

You knew Mother’s Day was going to be the busiest day of the year, and could plan for that. You knew people were going to make phone calls at Christmas time. Similarly, you can track what video people are watching and at what times of day. Humans follow patterns. And if we see patterns, we can reflect that in the network.

But now traffic is starting to shift from human driven workloads – entertainment, information, us doing our daily jobs – to machine driven workloads. Servers are running various jobs, and machines are not very predictable.

If you couple that with the aforementioned potentially limitless capacity, the size of the cloud infrastructure gets bigger. Machines get increasingly powerful with more cores, faster processors, etc. So we are dealing with a potentially much greater demand that’s absolutely NOT predictable.

How do we build a network infrastructure that can handle that?

NETWORK EVOLUTION

Ultimately, the network itself has to become programmable. We can no longer do the capacity planning cycles that project when we’ll need to add capacity. We need to get the network itself into a position where it responds to those applications. And as those workloads are changing and shifting, the network and the underlying fabric in the connectivity mesh is able to adapt to those workloads over time.

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Figure 12. Network evolution

We will have a new type of IP network. The end goal is to have a network that:

• Is re-programmable• Can be re-repartitioned• We can allocate bandwidth to and apply to workloads

And at the same time, we need to continue to scale capacity, we have to continually offer much higher access speeds, and we need to deliver new types of services. All this has to come together across a common infrastructure.

We also have to think how we manage and operate the network. As the network becomes more programmable, the systems we use to drive the network such as OSS and BSS need to become more agile.

NETWORK OPTIMIZATION TOOLKIT

You have seen a lot of the terms shown in Figure 13 – and together they form our toolkit for network evolution.

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Figure 13. Concepts and technologies for network evolution

The end goal is a common IP fabric that is programmable, easy to scale, and that drives down cost per bit. And the technologies all must interoperate in some way. Concepts and technologies in the mix include:

• Software-defined networking (SDN)• Network function virtualization (NFV)• Segment routing• Open source• Tools such as Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)• White boxes

SDN is a concept, not a technology. It’s the idea that we can make a programmable network. We can begin to simplify and flatten the network by pulling functionality that used to be in the network - control plane signaling, signaling of end to end connections, managing bandwidth – and move it into software that runs in a separate layer that controls the network resources themselves.

Virtualization is another tool that we talk about. NFV with SDN is yin and yang. NFV is a technology, but still a bit of a concept. What functions will we virtualize? The entire function? Or part of it, such as the control plane? We can virtualize that, run it on a server, and couple that to some actual physical boxes that do packet forwarding. So virtualization is really a tool to simplify provisioning and drive a lot of the automation.

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In terms of flattened hierarchies and simplification, segment routing really helps by allowing node level control and path control through the network without overloading the network with signaling protocols. Making it simpler.

Converging the network implies collapsing layers, bringing IP technologies, optical technologies and access technologies together in the same systems. These can be single shelf systems, multi-shelf systems, or be managed together and integrated at the box level. We want to make the network simpler.

We need to look at lower cost technology. Things like “white boxes” really mean “we want to drive costs out of the network”. Things like virtual silicon also drive costs out of the network.

Together, our toolkit for network evolution is all of these technologies, approaches, and techniques combined to optimize the network infrastructure.

THE OPTIMIZED, PROGRAMMABLE NETWORK

Figure 14 represents all these concepts and tools graphically.

Figure 14. The optimized, programmable network

Base level

At the base level is the network infrastructure. We still need to move bits in physical boxes or servers running software. And we need to implement those services within some type of hardware.

Control layer

Then we need a control layer, and this is really the SDN control layer as you see in the middle. A primary goal of the SDN layer is abstraction. Network elements will continue to become complex, but they’re simplified in the SDN layer. It’s running on some servers in the cloud.

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It’s going to be a combination of both service and network understanding. The services represent the duty cycle and workloads that are coming onto the network. So if you don’t understand the services, there’s no way to map that capacity into the network. And of course you have to understand the network itself. What’s the current status? What’s the utilization? If we bring together the services and the actual network, we can achieve network optimization.

Applications

Our applications and OSS/BSS systems that will ultimately be simplified are on top.

The OSS for example is dealing with fairly high level constructs. We abstract the complexity away through the SDN layer -- in many cases all the way down to the box -- to create a much more programmatic and dynamic environment.

In our toolkit, concepts and technologies will work together to achieve network optimization. The result is a programmable, common IP fabric that’s easy to scale and drives down costs per bit -- and in this way responds to unpredictable future needs as we move into the cloud era.

Quantifying IP/Optical Integration SynergiesBy Arnold Jansen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Alcatel-Lucent Ben Tang, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the Bell Labs Consulting Services department, Alcatel-Lucent Mohcene Mzhoudi, Senior Consultant Member of Technical Staff in the Bell Labs Consulting Services department, Alcatel-Lucent

IP/optical integration typically results in cost savings, but maintaining service availability is also essential when measuring total return on investment (ROI). An analysis of 3 modes of operation found multi-layer protection and restoration to be the most cost efficient while meeting availability requirements.

Run a hotter network without traffic melt downs

Service providers are always looking for ways to run their networks hotter in order to maximize returns on network investments. But when trying to economize it is important to keep an eye on service availability, as the cost of service outages can easily undo any savings.

Traditional 1+1 optical network protection keeps 50% of network capacity in reserve. The alternative approach of only leveraging MPLS-based protection and restoration mechanisms at the routing layer is equally inefficient, even though these inefficiencies are less immediately apparent. Nevertheless, in many networks this is the present mode of operation (PMO).

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State-of-the-art optical transport networks and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer technologies do provide a better alternative. Agile optical transport and an intelligent control plane enable transport layer resiliency with a cost-effective utilization of networks resources.

These protection capabilities leverage the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS - RFC 3945) architecture. GMPLS adopts key concepts from the MPLS control plane used in IP routing with functional enhancements to support multi-layer optical transport networks.

Figure 15. GMPLS protection and restoration options

Service providers can leverage GMPLS to drastically expand their existing toolkit of network traffic protection and restoration capabilities (Figure 15, left). With the right architecture, GMPLS-based transport layer recovery can be combined with protection mechanisms in the IP/MPLS routing layer to offer and implement differentiated availability service level agreements (SLAs) for different classes of service (Figure 15, right).

SLA requirements can subsequently be mapped on an appropriate multi-layer traffic protection and restoration strategy in order to balance availability, redundancy and resource utilization for the best returns on network investments.

Bell Labs TCO study on multi-layer cost synergies

Alcatel-Lucent commissioned Bell Labs to compare the relative cost of MPLS and GMPLS-based resiliency mechanisms. The TCO analysis is based on a backbone reference network consisting of 6 core routing nodes and 5 optical transport nodes. The physical transport network topology is partially meshed, while the core routing topology is a logical mesh.

The network resource requirements for a mixed traffic matrix were compared, with traffic growing evenly at 40% annually over a 5 year study period:

• 10% is expedited forwarding (EF) traffic. This is typically “lifeline traffic” such as VoIP that is sensitive to delay, jitter, packet loss, and outages. Protecting and restoring EF traffic has the highest priority. It must be resilient to multiple failures with restoration within 50 msec.

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• 30% is assured forwarding (AF) traffic. This is mission critical, high revenue data traffic that requires reliable transport but can compensate for limited packet loss, for instance through retransmission by the transmission control protocol (TCP). It must be resilient against a single failure with restoration within 500 msec.

• 60% is load-balanced best effort (BE) traffic. This is predominantly high volume Internet traffic with low revenue per bit and the most relaxed availability requirements. Nevertheless, service providers want to prevent long and frequent outages, and 1+N redundancy will provide resiliency against a single failure without nominal capacity loss.

The study compared 3 different network protection and restoration strategies (Figure 16):

1. Leverage MPLS to protect and restore all service traffic at the routing layer (PMO)

2. Leveraging GMPLS to protect all IP traffic at the photonic switching layer (FMO1)

3. Leveraging both MPLS and GMPLS/UNI in a multi-layer resiliency scheme (FMO2)

Present mode of operation (PMO) The PMO applied 1+1 redundant LSPs with MPLS fast reroute over unprotected but physically disjoint transport links to protect EF traffic end-to-end against multiple failures, with very fast restoration times below 50 msec.

AF traffic is carried by non-redundant LSPs with MPLS fast reroute over unprotected but physically disjoint transport links. For BE it uses N+1 unprotected, physically disjoint LSPs in an ECMP load sharing model. This scheme protects against capacity degradation when a single LSP or optical link segment fails.

Future mode of operation 1 (FMO1) FMO1 applies optical segments with GMPLS 1+1 protection and restoration combined to protect IP overlay traffic, which protects EF traffic against multiple failures with a restoration time below 50 msec. The difference with the PMO is that service restoration is transparent to the IP layer and acts on aggregated traffic in the optical transport layer.

Future mode of operation 2 (FMO2) FMO2 applies a combination of MPLS fast reroute over optical transport links with GMPLS guaranteed restoration to protect both EF and AF traffic against multiple failures, with rapid protection switching within 50 msec.

As wavelength restoration times at the photonic switching layer are in the order of seconds, MPLS FRR provides rapid restoration over alternate optical segments while the failed primary segment is being restored by GMPLS. Optical segments will be able to share spare resources for restoration purposes. During FRR restoration, full bandwidth recovery is guaranteed for EF traffic only, which means that potentially packet loss can occur for AF traffic in case of failure.

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Figure 16. Network service protection and restoration strategies for IP over DWDM

Study results on multi-layer cost synergies

Optical transport network costs are mostly determined by the amount of optical transponders required and wavelength consumption. Optical transponder count tracks closely to router port requirements, and are by far the most expensive component in the optical transport path, while wavelength consumption can impact the scaling requirements of intermediate ROADM systems that are switching the wavelengths.

The study results in Figure 17 indicate that FMO2 requires 46% fewer optical transponders over the 5 year period than the PMO, and even 10% fewer than FMO1. FMO2 shows significant cost savings over PMO in the initial years, with 47% savings over PMO and 51% savings over FM01 in Year 1.

Figure 17. Summary of network TCO savings

In the initial years, the transport network build-out is driven by 100GE connectivity requirements for the IP link topology -- and many wavelengths will be lightly loaded.

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FMO1 starts out with the largest cost because its connectivity requirements are higher than PMO and FMO2 due to the need for 1+1 link redundancy to protect EF and AF traffic, which results in a full mesh.

The PMO and FMO2 link topologies, on the other hand, are only partially meshed because MPLS FRR and GMPLS guaranteed restoration can dynamically create detours around link failures.

As traffic grows and wavelengths fill up, the incremental network build out is primarily driven by capacity growth and FMO1 catches up in cost over the PMO due to its greater efficiency.

FMO1 and FMO2 are virtually tied in the amount of router ports required, both consuming 37% less 100GE ports than the PMO over the 5 year period. The PMO consumes more router ports and optical transponders because it relies on intermediate routers to restore traffic on failed segments through MPLS 1+1 protection and FRR. FMO1 and FMO2, on the other hand, can restore optical link segments in the transport layer itself through GMPLS.

FMO1 and FMO2 can deploy transport layer shortcuts and build direct adjacencies between routers, which reduces the amount of router hops in the data path and consequently the amount of router ports and optical transponders.

The FMO2 using multi-layer protection and restoration is more cost efficient than FMO1 in the initial build-out years of the network, and effectively accelerates the cost savings of FMO1 by 4 to 5 years. The reason is that both the FMO2 and PMO link topology only need to be partially meshed due to the ability to use dynamic restoration (MPLS FRR over GMPLS GR), while the FMO1 link topology is fully meshed due to the use of 1+1 link protection.

Although FMO1 has a higher connectivity requirement than FMO2 and PMO in the initial years, it rapidly catches up in later years when the further network build-out is driven by incremental capacity needs. FMO1 surpasses the PMO in Year 1.5 because GMPLS-based protection of aggregate traffic at the optical transport layer is more resource efficient than using MPLS-based protection at the routing layer.

FMO2 is able to maintain its initial cost advantage also in later years because it benefits from the same incremental GMPLS cost savings as FMO1, while enjoying additional savings from deploying GMPLS UNI as well. Cost savings are predominantly obtained from the way that EF and AF traffic is being carried in the various mode of operation, because best effort traffic is unprotected in each mode of operation with 1+N passive redundancy.

Service availability

The average service availability calculations for each traffic category in each mode of operation verify that the various network protection and restoration schemes do not trade off a lower cost against reduced service availability.

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Figure 18. Service availability comparison

The results in Figure 18 show that for the given link availability, failure rate, and mean time to repair of fiber cuts, it is possible to meet the service availability expectation with any of the 3 design options.

Yet FMO1 and FMO2 meet these levels of service availability in a far more cost effective manner. In addition, the multi-layer protection and restoration FMO2 offers the highest and quickest returns on investments.

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Related ContentWebsites TechZine: Alcatel-Lucent online magazine Next Generation Communications: TMCnet online community Alcatel-Lucent Cable MSO: Information and solution offers for cable MSOs Switch to Fiber Now: Multiple PON related resources for MSOs

Products and Solutions Alcatel-Lucent Virtualized Service Router: Evolving industry leading edge routing Nuage Networks Virtualized Network Services: SDN powered Commercial services Motive Customer Experience: How to automate care, service, network and IT operations Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Mobile Gateway: One-stop-shop for Wi-Fi and cellular core functionality

Multimedia Access the gigabit future with PON: Short animated overview of the benefits of PON Cable cloud animation: Short animated overview of cable’s evolution to cloud Enhance your service offerings with a VPN designed for the cloud: See how MSOs can leverage cloud technologies to simplify business service offerings and gain market share Transform the Customer Experience: See how Motive CEM can help cable operators improve customer experience, differentiate your services, reduce cost, and increase customer retention

Papers, Articles, and Releases Re-architecting Cable MSO networks with PON: Evolution options discussed Content delivery networks plus PON: How CDN + PON will help MSOs embrace new opportunities Virtualized Residential Gateway: White paper — the building blocks and MSO benefits of adopting a vRGW strategy Customer experience transformation for cable operators: White paper (short or full version available) Multiple System Operator (MSO) Wi-Fi: Evolution of Wi-Fi and solutions Wi-Fi first: Should I do it? How do I do it? A business rationale paper for MSOs Wi-Fi first Capitalizing on IP/optical control integration: Bell Labs TCO study on GMPLS with multi-layer protection Capitalizing on IP/optical integration: Article — How IP/optical integration simplifies operations, increases utilization and more Bell Labs study reveals how integrating IP and optical technologies can ease network capacity: Press release

Other The road to a better return on network investments: Infographic Improving the customer experience with virtual home gateways: Online webinar replay about the benefits of adopting a vRGW strategy The Future X Network: A Bell Labs Perspective: Book from Bell Labs outlining its vision for the new technological era