With Network Dependence Critical, Is Downtime Acceptable?

M. Spanbauer

Summary Bullets:

• For years, enterprises invested in ‘good enough’ networks merely to make sure the plumbing connected everything together functionally.
• With cloud adoption rapidly increasing, fewer applications residing on-premises, and business continuity depending on 24×7 network access, enterprises need to re-think the network design and approach.

Enterprise networks were designed for years (and, to a large degree, still are) for three application areas: campus (or access), core, and data center.  With cloud and ‘anywhere’ access of mission-critical applications, users must have quality access to resources no matter the connection point.  Whether wired Ethernet, WLAN, wireless 3G/4G, or other means, downtime is unacceptable.  Yet, as RFQs go out, access resilience is missing or getting surprisingly low priority.  I contend that enterprises must raise the stakes and invest in redundant power, resilient management (whether in-box or in-stack), resilient protocols, and ultimately solid management interfaces (assurance, monitoring, orchestration, etc.).  Now, it is true that redundant links have become more prominent with the availability of commercial cable and DSL at aggressive prices (relative to fractional T and frame a decade ago), yet within the campus, surprisingly few switches or WLAN have RPS or resilient, distributed uplinks. 

Sensible Network Resilience and Diversity without Breaking the Piggy Bank

J. Stradling

Summary Bullets
•    Resilience and diversity can become very expensive
•    Architecting a sensibly-priced diverse network is feasible with thought and shopping around
Nearly every single international service provider is involved in cable-build projects in one way or another. For example Verizon has been building an eight-way trans-Pacific mesh network, and expanded its terrestrial mesh into eastern Canada. FT-Orange is increasing capacity in Latin America tenfold, and is involved in new submarine projects such as I-ME-WE (Asia-Europe), EASSy (East Africa) and Lion (linking Madagascar to SAT3/WASC/SAFE). AT&T meanwhile has over 200 Ciena CoreDirectors for control plane–based restoration in its intelligent optical mesh global network. Looking eastwards, several Asian tigers such as NTT Com, China Telecom and China Unicom have all been busy adding extra capacity as well marketing new land-based (e.g., trans-Siberian, Mongolian and through Russia) systems to give more choice and diversity. China Telecom sells the aptly termed ‘Information Silk Route’ as a well chosen brand message for its trans-Siberian network.