NETWORKS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

WANs and Telecom
The specific WAN service choices available to enterprises continue to be affected by disruptive telecom industry developments, such as carrier mergers and acquisitions. Many WAN service providers are struggling to support new business models (such as delivering their own video content), but concerns this will lead to “walled gardens” puts pressure on regulators to establish new telecom public policies promoting ’Net Neutrality --- so that enterprise and residential network users will still have the freedom to access competing third-party network applications and content.

New service provider technologies such as WiMAX fixed wireless and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystems), combined with next-generation residential broadband service offerings, are creating new transport alternatives for enterprises. Ultimately public Internet services may become acceptable substitutes for MPLS, ATM, or frame relay virtual-circuit-oriented services. Some governments are promoting IPv6 network deployments despite any compelling business benefits for enterprises, because of arguable impending IP address exhaustion in the public Internet.

Wireless and Mobility
With wireless now becoming the preferred form of communications for many network users, there’s a powerful incentive for device developers, product designers and manufacturers, network operators and carriers, and others allied to the field to push wireless broadband to parity - and beyond - with wireline networks. Despite dropped calls, lack of coverage, and the limited bandwidth for data that characterize most current wireless services, true wireless broadband technologies based on new variants of 802.11, Bluetooth, Ultrawideband, MIMO, OFDM, UMTS/CDMA2000 cellular, and mobile WiMAX/will also address the future of networks and central issue of fixed mobile convergence (FMC) – the promise of unified multimedia services across wireless and wireline networks.

This topic area covers the wireless broadband future from an enterprise perspective, and will consider the major technologies, systems, services, and devices that are enabling mobile broadband, including radio technologies and the key variables at work in wireless broadband solutions. Future wireless LAN, MAN, and WAN standards and services, such as those from mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), new wireless devices/smartphones, and location-based services promise to create even more wireless choices for enterprise and consumer wireless users.

Network Management and Operations
Network-based applications and technologies are rapidly outgrowing their vintage management systems. Nowhere is this more evident than in the shift from classical circuit-switched networks (e.g., DS3, ATM, SONET) to IP networks using Ethernet, MPLS, XML, SIP, etc. Service providers and enterprises will need new management techniques, systems and tools such as those based on SOAP/XML to replace aging SNMP, RMON, and related management platforms. Improved instrumentation and new incident management systems promise more rapid problem diagnosis.

Multimedia and content networking over packet networks remains a challenge on both public and private networks. Two-way video conferencing is often hit with unacceptable performance, even on private WANs. In public networks, next generation revenue applications such as voice conferencing, multi-media, HDTV, and gaming will have to perform well to gain customer acceptance. Mobile wireless environments will need solutions beyond the current QoS and MPLS techniques. New technologies are emerging to deliver improved performance: Some prioritize and modify traffic flows, others optimize bandwidth allocation, and still others use caching or compression to improve performance. Finally, this topic area includes ways to architect applications to achieve high performance across long-haul networks.