Do Changing Traffic Patterns Equate to Changing Network Architectures?

Submitted by frank.wiener on Tue, 06/29/2010 - 19:50

There’s little debate that the internet has changed the way we communicate, access information, even source entertainment. The question is what impact do these changes have on network traffic patterns and what opportunities exist to optimize network architectures to better address these changes?

For numerous decades preceding today’s Internet era, network traffic was dominated by voice services. Over 80 percent of voice traffic stayed local, with the remaining 20 percent or less classified as long distance. In this model, switching systems were deployed across the network, pushing closer to the network edge to keep local traffic local to minimize the cost of backhaul.

Today’s services are dominated by data services versus voice, and internet traffic dominates data services. Our teenagers chat with their friends, just as teens have done for decades. However they carry out those conversations via Facebook, sharing not just words but also high quality pictures which are downloaded by friends down the street and across the country. These communications are hosted from servers in the Internet. As a result the network has a seen a complete reversal of traffic patterns where today’s networks are dominated by data services, with more than 80 percent of the traffic leaving the local network – backhauled to the internet, data centers or content delivery networks upstream from the local service provider. In fact, many service providers believe that less than 10 percent of their traffic stays local. So what does this shift in traffic patterns mean to the model of deeply distributed network-based switching/routing?

Simultaneous with this fundamental shift in traffic patterns is the need to upgrade network capacity to serve not just Facebook but an increasing level of internet-based video services. In the early days of the Internet, routers were proposed as the platform of choice for efficiently grooming and switching IP-based services across the local network. In fact some vendors have advocated pushing routers across the network edge for more efficient IP services routing. However as 90 percent or more of the traffic is now backhauled between end users and upstream internet routers via Ethernet, routers provide no incremental value to most services while adding considerable cost and complexity when distributed across the network.

In contrast, packet-optical transport platforms (P-OTPs) have recently emerged to provide the packet based aggregation and switching efficiencies for Ethernet with the optical efficiencies of next generation transport platforms. Many P-OTPs provide exponentially higher transport capacities, with ultra-low latency and greatly reduced transport costs. While P-OTPs do not eliminate the need for routers, they can reduce the number and size of routers required in networks – reducing costs, while providing a network architecture which is better suited for today’s rapidly scaling backhaul-centric services. For more information on P-OTPs visit www.cyanoptics.com.

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Do Changing Traffic Patterns Equate to Changing Network Architectures?

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