Key Technologies and Architectures for Next Generation Network

Abstract

Within the next decade, all circuit-switched networks and packet-switched networks will converge into a few networks with a packet core. Content traffic such as IPTV will be dominant on these networks. These networks have to be designed primarily for transport content with reasonable performance for best-effort data and voice. There are a number of technical challenges in building such networks. For example:

• Processing for each access technology will be terminated in an edge access box such as DSLAM for broadband DSL, while keeping the core of the network agnostic. The complex radio access networks in today’s cellular networks will be replaced by a collection of access routers. A promising approach developed at Bell Labs called Base Station Router aggregates several functions in one access router and significantly simplifies architecture of cellular networks.

• Current IP networks are not suitable for the packet cores for these converged networks; they are best-effort, poorly managed, and not secure. For carrier-grade performance, these cores will need to provide QoS-support, manageability, and high security. We are working on providing a unique way of building such carrier-class packet networks, which we call the SoftRouter approach. In this approach, routers are disaggregated into simple forwarding elements and shared control elements. This approach also enables easy addition of new functions to the IP networks.

• Traffic in the Internet will grow to several terabits per second. We are building a scalable optical switching fabric based on tunable lasers and distributed scheduling techniques. This approach would enable the construction of routers with switching capacity of several tens of terabits per second.

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