Top Considerations to build a Future Transport for 5G Networks

source: NEC Future Networks

According to latest reports from leading Trasnport Infrastructure vendors Ericsson and NEC . it is very vital to build Next Era Transport for 5G that can serve for MPLS and SRV6 end to end . When we think of future business cases like End to End Network Slicing it will become for important .

These are

source: Ericsson

Transport for Open/C-RAN

As 5G will deploy in different scnerios and Cloud will be long term most lucrative one so transport must align with it by offering Packet and Ethernet based transport end to end from device to core preferably using e-cpri models that has significant low latency

Outdoor Dense Urban solutions

In Outdoor in city centers laying NG Fiber may not be feasible solution so offering connectivity using PON and MW is needed that is why it is important to not just lock with Fiber solutions

Automation of Transport

Just like others domains like RAN , Core , Edge the transport also need to be Orchestrated and must be optimized over time using ML and AI . the key for this is build a transport that can automate using T-SDN like ACTL workflows or Open ROADM and that can help collect all data that can be optimized with AI .Cool stuff

Future DC architectures

Transport should be flexible not only to offer transport based on 3GPP service model but based on DC architectures like solutions for Clos architecture , DIs-aggregated scnerios etc

Distributed architectures

Just like with other solutions in 5G the transport should be distributed like support for Hub /Be-spoke rather than full mesh for both reliability , performance and scale .

Secure architectures

Security nevertheless is of paramount importance specially as we will open transport for 3rd party and whole sale connectivity although this domain is well addressed in Orchestration and End to End Slicing however as famous adage we must be leave the software boundary un attended .

“Protecting a software with another software in a cloud is not scalable.”

–Saad Sheikh