The number of global. Agile networks: Ready for the future. Challenges to the network

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1 Agile networks: Ready for the future Scan for mobile reading In the last decade, network devices have become increasingly IP-based and interfaces are increasingly Ethernet-based. In the future, networks will be IT-based and industrial bearer networks will be IP-based. IP- and IT-based networks must be open, flexible, fast, automatic, and highly efficient, while delivering a good user experience. Simply put, networks must be agile. By Liu Shaowei, President of Enterprise Networking Product Line, Huawei The number of global Internet devices has reached 12 billion. Mobile payment is everywhere, making life more convenient. Cloud computing is reinventing business models. The Internet economy is revolutionizing the whole world by rewriting global business rules time and again speeding up social development. For businesses, growth rate, responsiveness to changes, and quickness of business model transformation are essential to survival and prosperity. In a time of interconnection and ubiquitous information innovation, IT has become a key enabler for businesses to build a new model of competitiveness. In the IT field, cloud computing, mobility, social media, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the five development trends. Meanwhile, as basic IT platforms, networks are facing great challenges. Challenges to the network Cloud computing demands higher network quality Many people were fascinated when Amazon s cloud service entered China. In fact, this is a sign that cloud computing is having a great impact on the traditional operation model of data centers (DCs). For networks, cloud computing may pose a greater challenge since the prerequisite for resource cloudification is strong network support. Currently, cloud computing poses different challenges to traditional networks depending on whether they are DC-to-user networks, or internal DC networks. Internal DC networks: Flexibility & bandwidth are challenging First, enterprise DC cloudification and virtualization are now a general trend, which requires quick migration of virtual machines (VMs) and a dynamic network to support this. There is no interaction between the traditional closed network and virtual resource management, so the network cannot support VM migration. That s where software-defined networking (SDN) comes in. SDN treats the network as a resource and opens it to upper-layer IT services, realizing dynamic, realtime, and flexible network adjustment. Second, in the future, 70% of all traffic will be generated on DC networks while 16% and 14% will be generated on carrier and enterprise networks, respectively. Server interfaces have expanded from GE to 10GE and are now expanding to 40GE and 100GE. This means that the demand for DC network bandwidth is increasing at a much faster pace than Internet broadband. DC-to-user networks: User experience is the greatest challenge With the deployment of desktop cloud and service migration to the cloud, networks are now similar to computer buses. Network quality has a direct impact on user experience. For example, desktop cloud bears not only work flows and s, but also real-time video conferencing and voice services. Multimedia services demand excellent network 22

2 Perspectives In the future, 70% of all traffic will be generated on DC networks while 16% and 14% will be generated on carrier and enterprise networks, respectively. Server interfaces are now expanding to 40GE and 100GE. Demand for DC network bandwidth is increasing at a much faster pace than Internet broadband. quality. Poor network quality will lead to inferior user experience. In reality, areas adjacent to DCs often have better network quality and user experience. User mobility complicates traffic management With the popularization of mobile devices, BYOD has become an effective way for businesses to improve office efficiency. Mobility also poses many challenges to traffic management, VIP user experience assurance, resource allocation management, and QoS policy migration to enterprise networks. Challenges to traffic management: Wi-Fi is now widespread in enterprise campus networks and employees can work at any location, making traffic unpredictable. This unpredictable swarm traffic is a great challenge to user experience. For example, if there are too many employees using Wi-Fi at the same time in a meeting room, the traffic will surge quickly, posing enormous pressure to upstream switching devices. In this case, not only the service experience in the current meeting room degrades, but service experience of other meeting rooms connected to the same switching device will be affected as well, particularly for those real-time and bandwidth-hungry services like high-definition video conferencing. Meanwhile, few enterprise campus networks are configured with QoS priorities. A few exceptions are configured with static priorities. This means when the traffic surges, VIP user experience cannot be guaranteed. For example, if an employee needs to access Wi-Fi to process urgent or important business, surging traffic could make it hard for him to do so, and that could result in loss for the company. Challenges to dynamic policy migration: Changing user access locations and modes require user-related network access control (NAC) and QoS policies to change accordingly. In a large enterprise campus network, the fixed network, WLAN, and external access all have their independent authentication and control centers and systems. The NAC and QoS policies must be statically configured for each system, which is time and labor-consuming. The existence of multiple social networking services also has a great impact on networks. Used by an increasing number of businesses, social networks are undoubtedly a great place to promote services. According to Gartner s forecast of the 10 most influential technologies in 2014, if a business does not have an effective basic network for multimedia communication, its competitiveness will be greatly diminished. Social networking requires multi-service, which has a profound impact on networks. Different networks place different requirements on the network. Voice services require a packet loss ratio of less than 10-2 and HD video requires a packet loss ratio of less than 10-6 to prevent pixelation. For business users, the most annoying thing in a video conference is pixelation. On a traditional network, it is impossible to identify whether pixelation is caused by the video conferencing system or the network. It s also difficult to pinpoint the problem to a single device and board. How to support these bandwidthconsuming services and ensure maintenance is a key question future networks need to answer. Many businesses are thinking about deploying social media systems that enable multipoint video conferencing. This surging traffic, combined with swarm traffic, makes the traffic model in an enterprise campus network more unpredictable. Big data analytics is required to defend against network attacks Big data analytics has been gaining attention in recent years. Google once used it to accurately diagnose a flu outbreak in the U.S. based on the most frequently searched pharmacy names and disease symptoms. How will big data analytics influence the ICT industry? 23

3 A market survey in the U.S. found that the most attacked facility in America s IoT is the waterworks. We cannot tolerate the possibility that a malicious attack could lead to contamination of the public supply of drinking water. As enterprises become more globalized and mobile workers become more common, network borders are blurring. Network attacks also become more varied due to employee mobility and diversified terminal types. Wireless tapping, attacks targeting mobile terminals, and 3G/LTE-based mobile network attacks are now commonplace. Traditional networks still rely on static single-point attack protection mechanisms. Firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPSs), and data loss prevention (DLP) devices work independently without any interaction. Big data analytics can help people perceive and even forecast abnormal traffic and security threats so that they can schedule all network resources for defense. IoT requires intelligent networks The IoT is no longer just an idea. It is a trend of business and industry development. Statistics show that 10 billion things were interconnected through networks in 2013, and the number is going to surge to more than 50 billion by Many businesses are using technologies like IoT and big data analytics to conduct complex and more accurate operations, leading to a strong demand for intelligent networks. Of course, networks must be of high bandwidth and reliability to support unprecedented traffic. Further, as IoT is intertwined with our lives, pipe security must be guaranteed. A market survey in the U.S. found that the most attacked facility in America s IoT is its waterworks. We cannot tolerate the possibility that a malicious attack could lead to contamination of public drinking water. Therefore, in the IoT era, networks must ensure pipe security in addition to supporting a large number of nodes and a wide variety of interfaces. The above changes require a new generation of enterprise network architecture, and that s where Huawei s agile network comes in. It was developed specifically to cope with the current network transformation challenges. What changes can the innovative agile network bring? In the last decade, network devices have grown increasingly IP-based with interfaces increasingly Ethernet-based. In the future, networks will be IT-based and industrial bearer networks will be IP-based. IP-and IT-based networks must be open, flexible, fast, automatic, and efficient, and deliver a good user experience. Simply put, networks must be agile. Huawei has launched the agile network solution, which, for the first time, integrated service models with technical models. The new-generation network architecture integrates requirements of mobility, cloud computing technologies, and security collaboration. The agile network is different from the traditional network in five aspects. The agile network puts greater emphasis on users, services, and customers experiences and a bit less on technology, devices, and connectivity, while taking the entire network into account rather than only a single point. It enables perceptible network quality while the traditional connectionless-ip-based network that relies on the best effort principle does not support network quality perception. The agile network features automated network configuration and service provisioning, and is a software-defined network (SDN). The agile network can be deployed in enterprise campus networks, DCs, branch networks, and WANs. It represents the latest ideas and results of SDN research. In 2013, Huawei focused on agile campus networks. Through on-demand service, security collaboration, quality perception, wireless/ wired convergence, and SDN smooth evolution, we helped enterprise customers transform their networks to support new services in an agile way. Change #1: Network resource cloudification and service ubiquity 24

4 Perspectives Huawei integrates security analysis software into the controller to collect log information of all devices on the network and record all security events. In the event of suspicious activity, the controller sounds the alarm. Administrators can then schedule all network resources to defend against threats. Ubiquitous service means the network policies, resources, and services can dynamically migrate as users move. Wherever users are, they can access the network on any type of terminal and enjoy a consistent service experience. The following policies need to migrate as users move to ensure consistent service experience. Access control policy: To ensure portable policies, Huawei employed the SDN architecture in the agile network. In DCs, SDN allows network policies to migrate as virtual machines (VMs) migrate. Huawei also introduced SDN to enterprise campus networks to enable migration of network resources and policies in accordance with the migration of employees. When campus controllers are deployed in a network, IT personnel need only to configure the controllers rather than the machines. The controllers can then function as a brain, translating and delivering signals to switches. Since IT personnel now make configurations on interfaces with graphics and natural languages, what used to be complex is now simple. QoS policy: QoS policies can also be configured on a controller. When many people are in a meeting and the traffic surges, the controller can accurately deliver the QoS policy to the switch nearest to a VIP user to make sure they can enjoy guaranteed bandwidth for a smooth experience. When BYOD becomes prevalent, the QoS policy will become more important in enterprise campus networks featuring services on mobile terminals such as Internet, voice, video, and other important communication services. After configuration on the controller, QoS policies can go wherever a user goes, which ensures guaranteed bandwidth and priority for VIP users/groups and key services. Storage and service policy: Large companies have more than one DC. To ensure consistent user experience, access latency must be minimized. Since these DCs are distributed across the globe, hot backup is adopted for important service systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The active-active backup mechanism ensures that employees enjoy consistent experience and minimum latency while accessing different DCs. This means that when employees travel between facilities supported by different DCs, they enjoy the best service experience no matter if the DCs are in different cities or even in different countries because services and service data are dynamically shared between DCs. This process is called floating and can be realized by the integration of storage and networks on an agile network architecture. Change #2: Full-scale security collaboration on the entire network Huawei integrates security analysis software into the controller to collect log information of all devices on the entire network and record all security events. The controller analyzes all information to detect threat anomalies that would not be detected through single point analysis. In the event of suspicious activity, the controller sounds the alarm and sends a report to network administrators. Network administrators can then schedule all network resources to defend against threats. This simplifies network administrators work and protects system security. When a certain enterprise network was attacked, the network administrator summarized the data afterwards, and found that if the logs of the attacked device and its surrounding devices had been properly analyzed, the attack would have been detected and successfully resisted. So then, why wasn t defensive action taken? Because the log data is so extensive that by the time it is processed and analyzed by a lone network administrator, it s too late. Big data analytics enables collaboration for security protection and timely, even preemptive detection of potential threats. 25

5 Change #3: Transparent network quality and accurate network management With connectionless IP, network quality is opaque on the traditional network. Huawei s Packet Conservation Algorithm for Internet (ipca) can solve the problem of network quality perception using a reserved bit to color, check, and count packets to accurately detect packet loss. ipca brings a lot of benefits in many scenarios. Quality monitoring of WAN leased lines: Many enterprises lease dedicated WAN lines from carriers. These leased lines are subject to constant packet loss, but why isn t the packet loss perceived by users? Because of the re-transmission mechanism of TCP and the application layer. Even though user experience is guaranteed, network quality is still affected by packet loss. ipca can be deployed at both interfaces of a leased line to record all packet loss, allowing enterprises to accurately evaluate the quality of the leased line. Transparent link quality monitoring: For multimedia services such as HD video conferencing, there are only a few devices. After ipca is deployed, the number of lost packets and the locations of packet loss can be accurately recorded. As a result, the video conferencing quality can be monitored and faults can be detected and then prevented or rectified. However, if devices from other vendors do not support ipca, how can ipca be realized? Must all devices on the whole network be Huawei devices? Absolutely not. The ipca only changes the reserved bit in IP packets and IP packets can be transmitted among all devices. Therefore, enterprises need only to deploy Huawei devices at particular network locations to evaluate the network quality of a corresponding network segment. Change #4: In-depth convergence of wired/ wireless networks What is in-depth convergence? How is it helpful? Huawei proposed that service cards of switches should support access control (AC), integrating forwarding, control, and management. However, convergence at this level is far from enough to ensure consistent wired/wireless user experience. We must integrate wired/wireless networks, which complement each other. In-depth convergence of wired/ wireless networks will promote consistent and optimized service and management experience for both wired and wireless users. In-depth convergence allows the wireless network to adopt the virtualization capability of the wired network. In a wired network, an access switch is virtualized into a service card of an agile switch and an access point (AP) is virtualized into a switch interface. The whole network is virtualized into a switch, greatly simplifying management. In-depth convergence also allows the wired network to benefit from the maintenance-free characteristic of the wireless network. Since APs are all deployed in high places like roof tops or poles, easy configuration and free maintenance are considered for APs from the start. The WLAN management model can also be adopted in the wired network to make access switches maintenance-free. Like an AC managing APs using the CAPWAP protocol, the agile switch can also use the same protocol to manage access switches. Change #5: Smooth evolution to SDN SDN was first applied in DCs to enable flexible scheduling of network resources and policies as VMs migrate. There are different understandings of SDN in the industry. We can focus on how SDN evolves to address problems. Huawei was the first to introduce SDN to enterprise campus networks, which allows flexible network resource allocation and policy adaptation as users roam. The agile network also brings innovation to WANs, branch networks, and DCs. SDN is used in WANs, greatly improving link utilization. For example, one of Huawei s large enterprise customers invested billions of dollars in leased lines, the utilization of which was only 30% to 40%. Through the deployment of WAN controllers, the link utilization was increased to over 90%, significantly cutting line leasing fees. Moreover, many enterprises hope to use SDN without affecting services on existing networks. They don t want the entire network to become SDN-based. In this case, dual control planes on one switch can be implemented. One physical network can be split into two logical networks one to run original protocols and services, the other for new SDN services. In this way, customers can have networks capable of smooth evolution to SDN. The agile network provides forwarding-level, device-level, NMS-level, and controller-based application programming interfaces (APIs) for service orchestration, providing a platform for secondary development and innovation. The ultimate objective of the agile network is to enable people and things to enjoy distance-free communication, convenient dissemination of information, and effortless communication free from all interference and limitations. The agile network enhances user experience, simplifies network O&M, and maximizes network efficiency. Huawei is committed to providing customers with a fast and flexible network architecture that enables more agile services. Enterprises must be committed to network innovation in order to tackle current as well as future service challenges. Innovation, once begun, never ends. Editor: Morgan timothymorganhatrick@huawei.com 26