By Brennen Lynch and Anukool Lakhina, Guavus, Inc.
Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are finding an increased reliance on their IP networks by consumers from a service perspective. As consumers become more dependent on IP services and thus bandwidth demand grows, CSPs require dynamic, stateful tools to optimize network operation/QoS and monetize the streaming data generated by the network. CSPs also have the opportunity to incorporate potential consumer-based revenue streams by targeting elastic, innovative, and potentially disruptive services and technologies. Operational virtualization can occur with systems that are present within the network now. CSPs have the opportunity to become early adopters of these closed-loop use cases and roll out incrementally, starting with solutions that can be supported by current network conditions and placing their business in a strategic position to exploit SDN in a timely manner. CSPs that implement a standardized data ingest/processing/fusion platform can fuel use cases that are supported by current network conditions (such as real-time routing decisions). As the industry and backbone/access networks move towards complete virtualization through SDN and NFV techniques, the common platform can ingest additional, relevant data sources (such as hypervisor logs) to power coherent virtualized, automated, closed-loop decision processes. This paper explores platform integration and techniques that can be implemented in the network now, which place operators in a prime position to exploit fully virtualized control systems as they become incorporated. Use cases from an operator’s network perspective (traffic optimization) as well as a consumer’s perspective (dynamic service delivery) are explored and demonstrated through experimental investigation of both current network and fully SDN-enabled test-environment scenarios.