ONE-CLICK TWEETBy Misbah Mahmoodi,
Sr. Product Marketing Manager,
F5.
2015 is shaping up to be a year in which mobile operators will see significant growth in the Internet of Things (IOT), but with that comes more security threats and making sure that operators can mitigate all types of attacks is paramount. We will see operators do more POCs of virtualized network functions which will most likely lead to deployment of live traffic using NFV. Although discussions around 5G have begun, most operators will be focused on how they can monetize their existing LTE networks, deploy IMS, and roll out VoLTE services. Finally, operators will see an increase in the amount of traffic that is being encrypted and they will need to find new ways to continue to provide a high subscriber Quality of Experience.
#1: INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)
The latest predictions based on a Cisco IBSG report, is that this year alone, there will be 25 billion connected devices and with the world population at 7.2 billion, that is 3.47 devices per person. This is expected to grow even more, with predictions of 50 billion devices by 2020. With mobile devices, wearables, smart homes and connected cars, and other ways our lives will be connected, mobile operators will be focusing on how they can evolve their networks to handle this exponential growth, and of course, monetize these new opportunities. The larger operators will consider deploying a separate virtual network to handle the M2M traffic for greater flexibility and agility to spin up and spin down various network elements. Another possibility will be to add deeper contextual awareness so that they can intelligently apply different policies and different QoS based on the type of traffic that is currently traversing their network at that given time.
Misbah Mahmoodi,
Sr. Product Marketing Manager,
F5
#2: GREATER SECURITY THREATS
With more ‘things’ connected to the network and IP-based LTE technology being more prone to attack, operators are at greater risk to sophisticated security threats. These threats will target the network, and also find a way into our devices and applications. Already in 2014, operators have experienced an increase in the number of DDoS attacks. In 2015, they need to be able to defend these attacks on multiple layers, including volumetric, network and asymmetric attacks. At the same time, while under attack, they need to maintain DNS availability, maintaining subscriber network access without negatively affecting the quality of experience. Operators need to realize the security risks they are exposed to and start to implement well defined security measures as defined by 3GPP and GSMA. Still, these measures are no guarantee that security won’t be breached, so they are going to require additional tailored solutions to stop the threats.
#3: NFV
In 2014 we saw a tremendous amount of activity related to NFV, both from operators and from vendors. Many operators have taken the next step from doing trials in the lab and moving into the field for PoC trials. While there are some ambitions to virtualize the entire network, most operators are taking a phased approach on what should be virtualized initially. Many are looking at initially virtualizing the Gi LAN, including DPI, Traffic Steering, VAS platforms as well as DNS and Diameter signaling solutions. There is also a lot of interest in use cases around Intelligent Service Chaining leveraging new technologies such as NSH and Geneve. At the same time, there will be many instances where operators may want to adapt a hybrid approach where they have purpose built hardware for their functionality that have high performance / high throughput requirements, while moving other functionality onto a virtualized platform. Let’s also not forget that to make NFV a success and to have that service agility that NFV will deliver, operators are going to have to make sure they have integrated their VNFs with an orchestration platform. To make this happen, vendors will need to prove to the operators that their VNFs can tie in with multiple orchestration systems and that they interoperate within the broader NFV ecosystem and work with SDN controllers for L2-L3 services.
#4: VOLTE
Operators have begun deployments of VoLTE, but we’ll really start to see VoLTE to available to most LTE subscribers in 2015. With this, operators will need to adapt and upgrade their networks to support the increase in quality of service and handle the massive scale of signaling that inherently comes with a VoLTE deployment by deploying Diameter routing solutions. In addition to this, there are signs that VoLTE interconnect and roaming are becoming a reality. The main challenge for most operators is how to stop the decrease of voice revenues, and while VoLTE won’t be the silver bullet, it will be a solid foundation of other IMS based services that can be built on top of VoLTE and its underlying IMS infrastructure.
#5: ENCRYPTED DATA
With more emphasis on data security and privacy, there is an increasing amount of data that is being encrypted. While today encrypted traffic accounts for around 10-15% of all traffic, it is growing significantly especially in Europe and Latin America, where there was a ten-fold increase in SSL traffic from the previous year. This poses a unique challenge to mobile operators, especially as they are looking at how they can enhance subscribers Quality of Experience and optimize their network resources based on the applications the subscribers were using. Operators will require different solutions that will allow them to provide an optimal user experience such as optimizing the traffic over TCP between the internet and the mobile network. There are a wide range of TCP Optimization techniques and algorithms that operators can take advantage of that will help them achieve a higher goodput and increase in subscribers download experience ultimately improving user experience.
Operators have a lot to think about in 2015, whether its how they will scale their existing networks or deploy a hybrid virtual network to handle the growth of IOT or to deploy VoLTE. As they do so, they’ll also need to ensure that they have secured not only their core network, but also ensure security of the users devices and applications running on the network. And with more and more traffic being encrypted, operators still need to continue on their path of developing new innovative services for their subscribers and providing a great quality of experience while optimizing their network resources. Operators who adapt their networks to take on these challenges will definitely have a step up on their competition and will set them up for big success not only in 2015 but in future years to come.
About The Author:
Misbah Mahmoodi is responsible for marketing strategy and execution of new technologies in the service provider market at F5. Mahmoodi has fifteen years' experience of marketing and product management experience in the telecommunications industry, having most recently served as product manager at Emirates Integrated Telecom Company (du) in the United Arab Emirates.
