The secret of delivering private-line experience over optical networks

The world stands on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution – the confluence of new technologies like cloud computing, big data analytics, and IoT have reached a tipping point where enterprises can successfully process workloads in the cloud like never before.

Indeed, 85% of enterprises will have deployed new digital infrastructure in the cloud by 2025, according to industry analyst IDC. In the US, the cloud migration rate of enterprises has exceeded 85% and in EU countries has reached 70%.

Governments are a key catalyst for this change, as they push whole economies to digitize to improve whole of society benefits and increase national productivity. 

However, this step change in compute scalability depends on highly reliable network architecture to ensure end-to-end performance remains high.

Enterprises are demanding a low-latency, high-availability carrier network experience comparable to leased line-connections in order to ensure cloud services can be accessed with performance similar to company data centers.

However, while carriers have end-to-end network advantages that OTT providers cannot achieve, they still face challenges in monetizing service level agreements (SLAs).

The opportunity is certainly there, but as carriers shift from private lines to SLAs, there is a need to very clearly measure and report on key metrics – which isn’t always simple.

Effectively measuring latency and availability

Unfortunately, underlying network standards have prioritized architecture over performance measurement, and the solutions that have been developed over time to attempt to measure this are often quite inaccurate.

Effective measurement is the absolute key to SLA becoming marketable in pre-sales, deliverable in-sales, and guaranteed after-sales.

With an unprecedented degree of automation, deterministic experience, latency control, and high-availability delivery, Huawei’s All-optical Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) solution brings the software-defined networking concept to the next level.

It allows carriers to deliver private-line connections with a tight focus on SLA delivery, whereas the SLA monitoring of latency and availability, and any adjustment of services that ensures SLA delivery, are all automated and built in.

This tight management and reliable delivery of SLAs translates to the ability for carriers to monetize SLAs by demonstrating real business value – guaranteed reliable private line experience.

Huawei has implemented the industry’s only latency measurement mechanism for on-stream services in its iMaster NCE Autonomous Network Management and Control System, providing latency measurement for private lines with an accuracy of up to 0.1ms.

Combined with latency mapping and optimum latency path computation policy and real-time latency monitoring, iMaster NCE helps carriers worldwide achieve high-quality leased line services with guaranteed low latency.

Huawei’s success in implementing this has delivered it 100% market share across more than 70 Optical Transport Network government and enterprise private-line networks in China.

The holy grail for operators is monetizing high availability. By monitoring and calculating the availability of fibers, network elements, and service protection, iMaster NCE provides a comprehensive service availability measurement mechanism.

Then iMaster NCE helps carriers monetize availability SLAs by using the availability map, availability path computation, and availability real-time monitoring mechanisms.

Moving from passive maintenance to proactive optimization

Major fiber faults are a core issue in optical transport network maintenance and operation because once they become apparent, a serious network outage has usually already occurred, and a carrier will have failed its SLAs.

To be able to deliver on service level agreements, carriers need proactive identification of fiber faults before they occur, through proactive pre-checking and prevention. Doing this level of work manually is onerous, costly, and potentially impossible from a resourcing perspective for large carriers.

This is where Huawei’s latest-generation autonomous driving network platform is a powerful cornerstone for a carrier’s network fault analysis.

Based on big data analysis of fiber gradient faults, Huawei’s iMaster NCE Autonomous Network Management and Control System can detect more than 10 fiber gradient faults, including fiber bends, loose connections, damaged connectors, and aging fibers.

This feature helps operators predict fiber faults in advance, reducing fiber faults by more than 30%.

Deployment across the globe

The iMaster NCE solution has also been put into commercial use across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, with nearly 400 iMaster NCE transport product sets deployed worldwide.

Its new generation brother, the iMaster NCE All-optical Autonomous Driving Network private line solution, has been deployed in more than 70 provinces and cities, including major carriers such as China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom.

With the continuous construction and enhancement of the iMaster NCE All-optical Autonomous Driving Network solution, carriers around the world can build high-quality OTN private lines.

Delivering a low-latency, high-availability private line experience over optical transport networks, with clearly demonstrable SLAs, is now easily deliverable for carriers. This will support high-quality cloud access for thousands of industries around the world, unleashing the dividend of digital transformation that governments worldwide are seeking.