Educational Tracks: Converged Network Applications & Services

Track 1: Converged Network Applications & Services

SPONSOR

The key driver in network convergence is the accelerating move from last-generation technologies like TDM for voice and ATM for data to a more consolidated network running on an IP, Ethernet and an optical foundation. The result is improved flexibility and cost of today's networks. It is also enabling networks to be much more application- and service-focused -- a key requirement for carriers to deliver Web and cloud services online, not to mention the IP mobile apps and services delivered over today's 3G and tomorrow's 4G networks.

Please Note: Sessions listed below are subject to change.

Day One: Wednesday, June 6, 2012

8:00 – 8:25 am
Improving Network Reliability Through Enhanced Visibility

Jon Pelson

Jon Pelson, Wireless Segment Leader, JDSU Communications Test & Measurement
We’re facing one of the most challenging network transitions ever, driven by the proliferation of smart devices, on-demand videos and social media content and the widespread availability of broadband access. As this network transition occurs, how can network equipment manufacturers and service providers test their services in a cost-effective way and maintain the network visibility they so desperately need?

How can service providers improve network reliability in the midst of one of the most challenging network transitions ever? This session explores how network equipment manufacturers and service providers can improve visibility into and across the network, to enhance service, making them more efficient and competitive.

8:30 – 8:55 am
New Revenue Opportunities for Business Services over Passive Optical Networks

John Hoover

John Hoover, Senior Product Manager, Tellabs

Optical Networks (PON) can be leveraged to maximize residential revenues over FTTH architecture and business revenues over the same all-fiber network. Historically PON has had great success with FTTH, but business services were focused on cable, DSL, T1 and active Ethernet networks. Yet, today’s advancement of all-fiber PON used for Optical Local Area Networks (OLAN) revolutionizes this debate.  This presentation looks at practical applications of OLAN  to increase business services opportunities.

9:00 – 9:40 am
Virtualization of the Access Network

Michael Kozlowski

Prayson Pate

Michael Kozlowski, Director of Product Management, Transport and Data Services, Integra Telecom
Prayson Pate, Chief Technology Officer, Overture Networks
The access network is big.  Not quite Carl Sagan 'Cosmos' big, but pretty darn big nonetheless.  And when it's your responsibility to know everything that's going on in something that big, you'll take all of the help you can get.

Just think about the data center, where billions of dollars have been and continue to be invested into virtualization, and where there are only hundreds of resources to manage more efficiently.  Contrast this to the access network, where there can be thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of resources to manage more efficiently, and much less effort has been made to offer a more maintainable and efficient management paradigm.

The access network can be made simpler.  It has to be if we want to continue to scale the number of users, if we want to "get more out of less" as the carrier revenues per subscriber continue their decline.  Scaling the management of the access network, making it more intelligent, more resilient, and more automated can and should be at the top of every carrier's wish list.
 
9:45 – 10:25 am
Panel: The Network Evolution Catch-22

Houman Modarres

Houman Modarres, Director, Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent
Vimal Kumar, Global Head, Communications & Network Solutions (CNS) Practice, Tata Consultancy Services
The explosive growth in fixed and mobile multimedia traffic is straining traditional IP Core and Optical transport network resources, and eroding profitability. New applications and new high bandwidth services are creating new revenue opportunities, but are placing further demands on the backbone infrastructure. Extracting value from these new innovative services while simultaneously reducing the total cost of reliably transporting high traffic volumes is the key to profitability for service providers.

Converging the backbone by integrating the IP and optical layers into one single entity for common visibility, provisioning and resiliency, provides a path to reasserting control over costs and profitability. Recent advances in key technologies including 100G, Optical Transport Network (OTN), GMPLS control, enhanced network management and intelligent IP offload have made this convergence possible. But one size does not fit all, and the right solution must consider the operations models and traffic demands that are unique to each service provider.

With testimony from service providers who have already converged their backbones, this session will explain why the current mode of backbone network operation is inefficient, discuss the operational challenges faced by service providers, and will show how converging the backbone optimizes the use of network resources and assets thereby achieving significant reductions in costs.
 

Day Two:  Thursday, June 7, 2012

2:30 – 3:25 pm
Panel: The Impact of the Death of the Web on Service Providers

Jason Collins

Jason Collins, VP, Emerging Technology & Innovation, Alcatel-Lucent
This session offers service providers new ways to think of their product and competition more broadly, with strategic advantages that they can leverage to capture key profitable pieces of new and non-traditional businesses.

Everyone is talking about the rise of apps as the preferred mechanism for consumers to interact with the Internet.  Apps are replacing what were traditionally pay-for services and also are a fundamental shift and strengthening of the ability for anyone to offer services over the top in a compelling way.  This shift impacts everything from customer support models, branding, and revenue generation models.  What will the impacts be on the industry?  How should service providers respond and restructure themselves to thrive in this "web-less" world?

3:30 – 3:55 pm
Enhanced RCS/RCS-e Services and Web2.0 Services: Tools to Reduce Churn and Add ARPU
Dominic Walker, Global Director, GENBAND
There is no doubt that IP is the technology of choice for next generation telecommunications networks.
However, even with what IP enables and the growth of IMS, operators are still struggling to reduce their customer churn while at the same time increase revenues which are being lost against the ever growing over-the-top (OTT) service providers such as Google and Skype, and the explosion of social networking, placing both the wireline and wireless telecom operators in danger of becoming a mere bit pipe.
The development of Rich Communication Suite-enhanced (RCS-e) Advanced Communication services is viewed by many as essential for realizing the true value of IMS, as it represents the evolution of integrated multimedia services in mobile and fixed-line networks. The goal is to speed the adoption of applications and services that are fully interoperable between network operators and devices and provide an enhanced user experience.

However, will RCS-e be enough? In this session we will look at how service providers can realize this  seamless integration of RCS/RCS-e and other IP-based services, interfaces and features between fixed, mobile and the Web domains, giving them the flexibility to meet new challenges and expand capabilities to meet emerging subscriber demands while avoiding to become a mere bit pipe.

4:00 – 4:25 pm
Avenues for Efficient Core Network Evolution

Houman Modarres

Houman Modarres, Director Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent
Bit streams are the oxygen of communications today, and handling them most efficiently defines the health of a service provider’s network.  The leap to 100G links in the infrastructure is about delivering speed without compromising services,  giving operators a tenfold increase in capacity and also driving operational efficiency in their networks. A balanced approach to optimizing the IP core and the underlying optical transport infrastructure ensures that service providers can profitably meet the challenge of rising traffic levels and collaborative multimedia applications while meeting escalating expectations of customer experience.  It’s about making the core network as efficient, future-proof, flexible and cost-effective as possible.

Optimal bandwidth scaling, network resource utilization and power efficiency are essential vectors for scaling networks that handle escalating traffic levels from an increasingly diverse range of multimedia and cloud-based applications.  To ensure the lowest cost per bit for transport, Service providers seek to optimize their IP core architectures, moving from a multiple parallel IP core networks to a single powerful core network that can leap beyond legacy architectures and scale 100GE interfaces, while integrating more closely with optical infrastructure that integrates DWDM and OTN switching.
We will discuss how each of these elements will prove critical to enhancing the efficiency and performance of tomorrow’s core, further enhanced by cross-layer visibility and convergence between historically disparate IP and optical domains of the network.

Attendee Take-Aways

• Discuss technologies and architectural approaches that address this key challenge in a manner consistent with service providers’ operational realities
• Understand and consider the various vectors of efficiency that are paramount for tomorrow’s core networks

4:30 – 5:00 pm
Operational Benefits of ROADM in Large DWDM Rings
Dr.Brian Smith, Product Manager, Optelian
Growing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications and cloud services for both business and residential subscribers is forcing operators to expand their network capacity, adding nodes and DWDM wavelengths. As these DWDM rings become larger and the number of wavelengths increases, optical power management becomes a greater challenge.  All of the optical components within a ring contribute to the divergence of power levels along a path, some by virtue of the inherent variability between components and others dynamically as wavelengths are added or removed. The result is that with a traditional fixed OADM infrastructure, manual power balancing must be performed to maintain amplifiers within specified power ranges and to reduce the requirement for costly regeneration.

Operators can invest the time and expense in performing this manual operation with a fixed OADM infrastructure, however the cost increases significantly with number of nodes and number of wavelengths. In addition, the dynamic nature of power variations resulting from cascaded optical amplifiers and non-linear effects such as Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS), means that this costly re-balancing operation must be repeated around the entire ring every time a wavelength is added to the network and there is no guarantee that existing traffic will not be impacted by the changes.

This session will discuss the technical issues of optical power management within a DWDM ring and how ROADMs can effectively address these challenges. The business case for ROADMs will also be examined and compared to traditional fixed OADM approaches with respect to total cost of ownership.