Network operators and service providers are stepping up preparations for the Internet of Things, which combines income opportunities with technical challenges.
Consumers will be crazy about IoT devices, from wearable devices such as Apple Watch and Fitbit Health Bracelet, to thermostats connected to the Internet, to AmazonEcho cloud music players, to connected vehicles. Enterprises also love the Internet of Things. They use IP-based technologies in inventory control, smart signs and medical equipment.
This is a huge market. It is estimated that by 2020, the market size of direct products and services will reach10.7 trillion US dollars, and the market size of indirect support will reach 263 billion US dollars. Therefore, there will be billions of connected "things" in the Internet of Things. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be10.3 billion to 25 billion things connected to the Internet of Things.
Although many technology-driven conversations about the Internet of Things focus on terminals (such as fitness belts) and back-end applications (such as social networks that track and analyze sports), the fact is that the Internet of Things relies entirely on secure, reliable and highly available network connections. As far as the goal is concerned, it will connect everything, from Wi-Fi access points in homes and cafes, to 4G cellular data services, and then to corporate networks. On the back end, service providers manage the part of the Internet of Things from devices to data centers or clouds, which is connected with MEFCE2.0, MPLS and optical fiber networks.
The Internet of Things brings many opportunities for telecom companies that provide such connections and industry suppliers that provide hardware, software and services for operators. This also brings challenges, because the communication traffic of the Internet of Things is different from the traditional network traffic. MarieFialaTimlin, marketing director of CENX(CENX provides lifecycle service orchestration solution for software-defined networks), explained: "IOT traffic is characterized by high-capacity signaling and low-bandwidth data transmission traffic. The more events occur in the network, the more data will be collected. When I talk about data, it is not necessarily consumer application or subscriber type data, but data that network events are happening. "
She went on to say: "The Internet of Things has aggravated the problem of big data networks and created the need for service providers to manage their networks more effectively, because all these events happen in the system, for example, whether for troubleshooting or to ensure high-quality services. This really drives the demand for lifecycle service choreography, because you already have a big data problem here, and you are trying to apply all the cloud computing technologies that have been used to solve big data analysis problems in the business world. "
Planning the impact of communication traffic
Dr. Zhang Hongwen, CEO and co-founder of WedgeNetworks, a security service provider, added: "Because the Internet of Things is a fast-growing market, when operators try to deploy infrastructure, they must plan their capacity. They are considering a planning cycle of three to five years or longer. With limited capital, how to deal with the rapid development of Internet of Things in the future? One thing that can provide an answer is the virtualization of software-defined networks and network functions. Spend your money there and don't invest too much in firewalls and switches. "
Timlin added: "Operators must track the network events of each network device and each connection to keep the pipeline running normally. They must also aggregate subscriber level events, such as which application is being used. The best of both worlds is to combine these two types of data, so that you can intelligently decide when and where you need to increase network capacity. This is where NFV comes in, because then you can expand more flexibly and economically. "
AngusRobertson, vice president of product marketing in insightsoftware.com, said: "This means analysis-a lot of analysis about network traffic." (The company sells software to help customers develop enterprise resource planning systems, and his company will rely on these analyses to serve customers), he explained: "With the Internet of Things, you have millions of devices that can provide you with additional leading and lagging indicators, so that you can understand your business more clearly and help you take correct actions from a business perspective to improve your overall business performance."
Robertson continued: "When it comes to big data, we say these three V words, quantity, speed and diversity. Therefore, it is a challenge to be able to handle big data that is always related to these millions of data sources from the Internet of Things. It is important not only to have the performance level you need, but also to effectively capture and integrate these data sources. "
Imitation movement
RaghuRanganathan, head of CTO office network architecture of global telecom equipment supplier Ciena, hinted: "The traffic pattern and expansion of the Internet of Things are reminiscent of mobile backhaul, which may provide a model for the future."
Ranganathan said: "In the Internet of Things, most of the traffic goes back to the cloud from the source, instead of users downloading things from the cloud to the data source. Reliable connection is very important. In addition, the scale must be distinguished from the perspective of some IoT devices with low data volume but high signaling traffic, but there may also be another type of device, such as closed-circuit television, which can send a large amount of traffic to a ship. "
Ranganathan continued: "What does the Internet look like? How is it different from mobile backhaul? You have something connected to the base station through the air interface, such as WiFi or 4G cellular. You have a wired return trip. For example, organizations like 3GPP are saying, "How can I update my LTE specification so that I can have more upstream traffic instead of downstream traffic?" "
Ranganathan added: "This type of future architecture may centralize and virtualize the baseband processing of the base station, just like the CloudRAN design. As a network operator, I can use my SDN paradigm to program the network to connect to these CloudRAN endpoints, so as to collect and process traffic in the best way on the network. "
Traffic optimization and security
Many applications of the Internet of Things have been oriented to consumers-such as smart watches, fitness belts and home thermostats. Although no service provider wants consumers to suffer service interruption, all these are not critical tasks. ArieGoldberg, CEO of Omnitron Systems Technologies, which sells Ethernet and TDM equipment, points out that this is not always the case.
The above is what Bian Xiao shared about how the Internet of Things aggravates the problem of big data network. For more information, you can pay attention to Global Ivy and share more dry goods.