In 2020, what will “the network” or “the Internet” look like, in terms of infrastructure? I’ve gotten that question a lot lately, as well as the question of whether it’s SDN or NFV or the cloud, or mobility or maybe content or even Cisco, that’s driving the evolution. Of course, people also wonder who will win, either in terms of sectors of vendors or specific ones. Nobody can consistently predict the future, but I do think there are signs we can read to give us a shot at answering some of these questions.
The key point to start with is that network change is driven by investment change, which is driven by ROI. Technology changes happen because there’s a financial reason to drive them. We will deploy what’s profitable, and in the end that will create new infrastructure because profit trends are better sustained by new technology choices. The profits can be created by raising revenues, lowering costs, or (almost certainly) a mixture of both at once.
For this discussion, I want to focus on the network, meaning the elements of infrastructure that actually carry traffic. Networks in the classic OSI sense have three layers (4-7 are in the endpoints not the networks). Of these three, bits are created in the bottom Physical Layer (Level 1) and are steered around to create connectivity by the other two layers. If we look at the extreme case, we can say that there’s nothing much that can be done to replace the physical layer—virtual bits don’t make much sense. Everything above that is up for grabs.
So let’s grab a little. Suppose we create an Optical Foundation Network using agile optical principles. Every traffic concentration point, which includes central and tandem offices, service points of presence, mobile SGW/PGW points, and cloud or NFV data centers would be a hub of optical connectivity. Cheap bit paths, in short. Suppose then that we have SDN-based electrical-layer grooming in each of these locations, and that from that we have groomed tunnel meshing of all the edge locations that don’t justify optical hubbing. This is our new Level 1, a network that provides “site connectivity” and rich optical capacity, and that is self-healing so that connection issues are resolved here and don’t appear above.
Where, above this, we have the Virtual Layer. In this layer we build application-, customer-, and service-specific virtual subnetworks employing something like overlay SDN technology and virtual switching/routing. We have instances of Level 2/3 technology hosted as software on cloud servers. This layer feeds standard L2/3 interfaces to applications and user service access points. This is where user and application connectivity lives, exploiting the transport optics below.
It’s pretty easy to see how this transforms things. For residential/consumer services we are really aggregating to service access points, where we would need something like a BRAS (let’s call it an “SPAS” for “Service Point Access Server” to provide tunnel-to-service linkage. VPN and business services in general could map to this model very easily by simply having a virtual switch/router instance set dedicated to the service, with the virtual instances hosted where traffic patterns dictate.
The business side of this is easy to conceptualize, as I’ve said, but some may still think that “the Internet” needs more. Can we support the enormous dynamism of the Internet with a model like this? To address the Internet we can exploit two trends—“metrofication” and “personal agency”.
Even today, about 80% of profitable Internet traffic stays inside a metro area. Thus, most of the Internet traffic would be handled as service point of presence content caching or cloud traffic. All we have to do is make a resource addressable and get a user tunnel to the on-ramp “SPAS”. For the stuff that’s not fulfilled locally (my model says that only about 15% of traffic will fit that model) we’d have an Internet SPAS and a tunnel-and-optics model of interconnect of the major metro areas.
It’s also already clear that as mobile devices take over from desktops or laptops and as M2M evolves, we’re entering an age where users don’t interact with information resources any longer. They ask an agent in the cloud to get answers for them. This means that “the Internet” evolves to a structure where a bunch of information and analysis servers in the cloud form the core of a virtual information resource, whose edge is the personal agents. User conversations are always with their agents, which means that the only traffic between “the Internet” and the users is their requests and responses. That, in turn, means that Internet traffic is now internalized where it can easily be mapped to our optical foundation.
Our hypothetical model of network evolution leads us to a future dominated by agile optics, SDN in its pure OpenFlow or overlay forms, and virtual switching/routing. Traditional devices at Levels 2 and 3 would be largely displaced by virtual behaviors except within the data centers, which means that data center switching might be all that’s left of traditional electrical-layer networking by 2020. Obviously this is something Cisco might not like much (or Juniper or Alcatel-Lucent or the other big-iron players).
While this would be a seismic shift in network equipment, it might or might not result in a seismic shift in the competitive landscape. It depends on how our future architecture comes about—will networks drive the change or will servers drive it? Is this about SDN or cloud/NFV?
Software is a common element in SDN and NFV, and of course the software giants could decide to tune their cloud offerings to serve in both. IBM has good cloud credentials and so do Microsoft and Oracle, but they share two challenges. One is that operators really want as much open source code in both SDN and NFV as possible to protect against being led to siloed SDN/NFV implementations by clever vendor tactics. The other is that both SDN and NFV are going to be educational sells, with a lot of hand-holding. There’s just not enough software money on the table to make that attractive to the vendors, at least at first. Software players will need alliances with vendors with more skin in the game in order to stay the course and win.
A network-driven change, one where agile optics and SDN combined in an intelligent way, could give major network equipment providers a chance. We have minimal investment in agile optics and virtually none in electrical/SDN grooming today so both spaces are up for grabs. The brass ring here would be easiest to access for vendors with strong optical positions already. Among the giants, Alcatel-Lucent would be well-positioned, and Ciena among the second tier. However, even Cisco could gain some leverage if they were aggressive enough in supporting the evolution “downward” from traditional L2/3 to SDN.
Any transition to hosted virtual networking is going to generate a lot of server sales, and this may be the compelling truth about who wins. While, as I’ve said, management and orchestration will make the business case for either an SDN or NFV revolution, or even for the cloud, the big bucks will come from selling the servers. Cisco is a double threat because they have networking and IT. HP would be the more logical favorite here, though, because the evolution of the network I’ve described would be all positive for them where Cisco would clearly see it as robbing next-quarter Peter to pay 2020 Paul in terms of revenue and profits. HP could leverage both its cloud positioning and NFV positioning easily in such a transformation of networking, and it could also grab some of the virtual layer with its SDN. Brocade, a player in data center networking and virtual routing at the same time, would also have a shot at greatness.
Whoever wins in my evolved model, they’ll play in a world where networking is very different, and also IT. We’re heading for a fusion of the cloud and networking in all respects, driven not by the arguable and variable forces of technology but by the relentless drive of economics.
With all these choices of drivers and vendors, it’s convenient to think we might muddle along without bringing this new model about. That’s possible, of course, but I think that my opening view is ultimately going to prove correct. Networks are built by ROI not by abstract technology evolution, and there is simply no way to make an industry that’s dependent on consumer experience delivery for its primary growth into an industry that relies on higher bandwidth pricing. You have to get to the top of the food chain to sustain profits, both as a provider and as a vendor. And if I’m right, the positions of all the players will have been set by the inevitable capital inertia of evolving infrastructure by 2018, so we’ll soon know who will be the giant in the network of the future.
