Evolution of Core Transport Networks

•  technological advances,
•  industry convergence,
•  deregulation,
•  competition,
•  globalization, and
•  consumer lifestyle.

On one hand, technological advances in electronics, photonics, and software have been providing ever increasing bandwidth, switching and routing capacity, and processing power at ever decreasing cost. On the other hand, deregulation, competition, and the entry of new players are making it imperative to introduce cost-reducing and revenue-generating technologies at an unprecedented pace. Finally, consumers, pressed for time at work and home, are willing to pay for network-based services which simplify business and home activities, allow anywhere/any-media communication, and provide high-quality entertainment.

This ongoing change is creating tremendous opportunities for network equipment vendors, infrastructure operators, and service providers. On the other hand, it is also creating many challenges for all of them. The rapid pace at which new technologies, with new capabilities and higher capacities, are becoming available is making it hard to decide which part of the existing infrastructure to keep, which new technologies to develop, when to introduce newly developed technologies, and how to interoperate old and new during the continuing transitions. Multiple options at any given time, and many more options when viewed as a sequence of choices over a planning horizon make this even more challenging. Explosive growth in overall world-wide traffic (especially generated from wireless access and created by the Internet and Intranets) coupled with a high degree of uncertainty in future traffic patterns call for the relevance to planning network technologies, topologies, and capacities.

Also, while the costs of processing and transport capacities are going down rapidly, the cost elements associated with operating, managing, and modifying the network tend to go up. This change in the relative costs of capital vs. operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) of the network brings yet another set of challenges in planning and deploying networking technologies and capacities.

Here we discuss the key factors affecting the evolution of the transport network, and provide guidance for future-ready transport infrastructure. First, we discus the traffic growth demand as the key driver behind the evolution of the transport network, and optical technology as the key enabler of transport evolution. We then present three transport architecture alternatives and consider the merits of each relative to future extension. Finally, we describe the needs of the transport network, the elements of manufactures’s transport network vision and evolution.