Wifi Revolution

As Mobile Video and other bandwidth-hungry mobile applications dominate the wireless communications infrastructure, wireless backhaul — the transfer of traffic from a wireless base station back to the core network (and ultimately the Internet) — become critical. In the past, T1s and E1s were used to do this, but increasing bandwidth demands encourage the deployment of fiber, which can be expensive. The latest approach is to use point-to-point wireless backhaul technologies, or a combination of wireless and fiber. In this six-part series, we take a look at what’s happening with wireless backhaul today.

 

The next player we shall examine is VPISystems known for their OnePlan integrated network planning system. It enables communications service providers, systems integrators and manufacturers to design, plan and implement their transition to a next-generation IP-based network. It can be used whether a provider is augmenting their existing network, merging multiple networks or planning an entirely new network from the ground up.

 

VPISystems’ Robert Smithline, senior director of Next Generation Strategy, says, “When it comes to wireless carriers, VPISystems really sees the entire network. We have a couple of big wireless customers and we look at their needs from end-to-end. There’s the access portion, the backhaul portion and the core network. We think it’s important to look holistically at the entire traffic stream from end-to-end and be able to plan from each element through the other elements, understanding the entire design. For example, we’ve just started working  on a project for a Tier-1 carrier and the products we’ve sold them are our access products, distribution products, IP products and transport products. The entire network is viewed as a single entity, not just the backhaul part of it.”

 

“Specifically on the backhaul portion, wireless carriers have several options. The really major element is cost. Just talk to any operator about optimizing their network, and costs will be the first issue to pop up. Until now, many wireless carriers have been simply home-running all of their cell station traffic back to a major central office. Access is terribly expensive. It always has been. It’s really difficult to maximize utilization of it because at any one time you’re dealing with a fixed amount of bandwidth,” says Smithline.

 

“What we do is to optimize that bandwidth from the endpoints to the core network. There are several factors in doing this. We’re seeing a big trend involving Ethernet backhaul. This allows operators to have shorter circuits to an aggregation point and then a larger circuit from that aggregation point back to the core network. Then the core equipment distributes the traffic across the network to the other endpoints. This is a great way to save money because shortening those access circuits is a massive cost element. Access could be 30, 40 or 50 percent of your transport costs overall. Reducing access is the major issue,” Smithline adds.

 

“We of course pay close attention to Quality of Service [QoS] along the way,” says Smithline. “For example, regarding the use of Ethernet backhaul, there are many elements for building Ethernet edged networks, using VPLS [Virtual Private LAN Service] and PBB [Provider Backbone Bridging] to enhance QoS in the backhaul portion. But, ideally, most mobile carriers don’t consider much best-effort traffic there. To achieve a reasonably high QoS, you want to make sure that all of the bandwidth is available that’s required, but you only upgrade when you really need it.”

 

“Visualization is a very important part of today’s network design,” says Smithline. “People think of a pretty GUI, but the reality is that these networks have become so massive and complicated that you have to offer visualization tools to simplify the understanding of the network and ‘drill down’ for information as needed. There can be thousands of circuits in these networks, and figuring out what you want to know can be challenging at times. You also must be able to run accurate and comprehensive reports, so you can analyze parts of the network that should be of interest without having to do much manual ‘drilling down’ yourself. For example, there are ‘what-if’ scenarios and ‘worst-case’ scenarios. The tools you have should be able to predict and warn you about the problems you will have in the future before they actually happen.”

 

“There has been an explosion in the number of devices and applications that eat up bandwidth,” says Smithline, “but there are solutions for wireless backhaul available other than a full overhaul of the infrastructure. Down the road you will see an evolution toward more fiber distributions closer to the customer. The reality is that the bandwidth demands are climbing rapidly, and it’s not just for wireless communications. I’ve seen estimates that have Internet traffic at least doubling every year for the next five years, most because of the demands created by video in all its forms. Now that people are really jumping onboard with 3G and full-featured endpoint devices on wireless networks, the operators are seeing a massive uptake in their bandwidth capacity needs. Voice is actually a very minor application when it comes to bandwidth usage at the edge, which is basically the cellular device. If you start adding video and data, that’s where the bandwidth needs start jumping up exponentially. It’s a great revenue opportunity for the wireless carriers, but they have to be able to keep up bandwidth-wise, which is why they really have to plan ahead by analyzing marketing inputs to yield what they think their demands will be. Their trending up to this point in time doesn’t even come close to covering the demands they will encounter for all their really bandwidth-intensive services such as video, music and all of the things people are downloading these days.”

 

“Wireless carriers are also seeing a great evolution of their transport networks as well, more so than anyone else,” says Smithline. “That’s because things on their core network has changed so massively over the past two, three or even four years. Traditional carriers such as an AT&T (News - Alert), Verizon, or any of the big Tier-1s, have dealt with multiple types of traffic on their core networks for many years. They’ve been selling Internet and private VPNs and voice and various such services for a very long time. But now that edge devices are becoming more prevalent, you’re seeing a lot more wireless carriers look more closely at their core network design, to make sure that they have proper implementations with Class of Service, and to ensure that high-priority, real-time traffic does indeed traverse the network first. Up until now, this has all been a bit of an afterthought. But now they’re looking much more closely as to how their services are delivered end-to-end to make sure they can prioritize traffic in the core and get their real-time high-priority stuff out first, and still have some bandwidth leftover for their best-effort traffic.”

 

“I try to emphasize to everyone that planning network optimization is really an end-to-end task,” says Smithline. “It can’t just be for backhaul, and it cant’ just be in the core network. You have to include the access networks too, because that’s what supplies the demand requirements to your backhaul design. As you add WiMAX (News - Alert) and other elements to your edge design in the access networks, that’s going to have a direct impact throughout the entire rest of the network, and it really should be a flow-through design with every element.”

 

 

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