What is Bandwidth on Demand?
Today, connectivity services are a mostly static experience, meaning that once the endpoints and service attributes are defined, not much changes. However, the age of cloud networking means that static connectivity just isn’t enough anymore. What’s increasingly needed is a network that gives us the bandwidth we need, when we need it. That’s why you’ve likely been hearing more about bandwidth on demand lately. But what exactly is bandwidth on demand and what will it mean for networks and end users alike?
Niloufar Tayebi is a Senior Advisor in Ciena’s Global Industry Marketing team, focused on helping service providers find new revenue streams from their networks through on-demand and other value-add services.
This is the second in a series of blog posts focusing on BoD and on-demand services. Other posts in the series:
To put a fine point to it, the world revolves around bandwidth.
It’s no secret that connectivity is the lifeblood of the digital superhighway, nor is it a secret that global telecom infrastructure struggles to keep up with the demand volume and ever-shifting ways that we use it.
Today, connectivity services are a mostly static experience, meaning that once the endpoints and service attributes are defined, not much changes: someone needs a connection, they sign a contract, it gets turned on. And that usually takes quite a long time to establish, from a few days to few weeks.
However, the age of cloud networking means that static connectivity just isn’t enough anymore. The demands put on our networks are changing. The expectation is that network capacity will adapt to our bandwidth needs and changing end points, instead of vice versa.
What’s increasingly needed is a network that gives us the bandwidth we need, when we need it. That’s why you’ve likely been hearing more about bandwidth on demand lately. But what exactly is bandwidth on demand and what will it mean for networks and end users alike?
You may have heard it called Network as a Service (Naas) or BoD but essentially, we’re talking about the same concept: Bandwidth on Demand allows you to customize your connectivity parameters, giving you control over your network usage like never before. For example, you may request an increase in your service bandwidth from 1G to 10G every Saturday night, for just three hours, in order to perform a large-scale data backup. The network delivers it and then, after that time period, your bandwidth service goes back to business as usual.
BoD solutions adapt to these recurring network fluctuations with two different approaches related to timing: user can demand instant or scheduled bandwidth.
The most likely prediction is that our network traffic will live in a hybrid model, where static and on-demand services will co-exist. The benefit here is that on demand services provide flexible bandwidth, locations, and connectivity times – three highly compelling and customizable factors that static services simply cannot provide.
[White paper: Evolving from static to on-demand connectivity services]
If you’re a service provider, by now, you’re probably envisioning a host of applications for BoD and wondering how you might package and market such an offering in a specific vertical or target. Here are two specific examples of BoD that nearly everyone can relate to:
Stadiums: Stadiums and sporting arenas have drastically fluctuating bandwidth demands. During off-hours, these venues have little need for massive connectivity as compared to times when events are happening. In fact, there’s such an extraordinary difference in bandwidth demand that it begs the question, why should a stadium or sporting arena be forced into a static contract for such a dynamic use case?
Healthcare: With emerging changes in privacy laws, record-keeping, telemedicine, and the coming of wearable health monitors, healthcare provider networks consistently struggle to keep their data infrastructure current with the technologies employed by their hospitals and clinics. A dynamic broadband solution here would absolutely be in step with the evolving and growing data needs of the healthcare industry.
This isn’t to say, however, that static networks are the wrong choice or that BoD will replace existing static services entirely. Instead, it’s meant to assist and enhance them, like renting a car to make a business trip easier – you have a car at home (your static network) but you still need something to get you around when you’re away (bandwidth on demand).
With enabling technologies like software defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) on the horizon, it’s clear that bandwidth on demand is coming. The challenge for service providers is two-fold:
(1) How to establish robust BoD service offerings in key target markets?
(2) How to position BoD services so that they complement static services instead of cannibalize them?
We’ll answer those questions and more with the next few posts in this series as we dig deeper into BoD and explore the implications and issues associated with service providers making the shift and what it means for their customers.
Thank you. Your comment has been received and should appear on the blog shortly.
by Niloufar Tayebi
(cont'd....)
MDSO instructs the associated vendor SDN controller to allocate resources. i.e. keeps track of the resource calendaring database. MDSO works through RAs to keep intelligence of network resources to ensure that resources line-up / are available across the multi-vendor domains.
From capacity planning perspective, the provider allocates the capacity based on expected utilization rates.
In the scenario where the user is requesting a permanent 1GE circuit, the provider can charge for the full price of 1GE circuit as fairly it is dedicated to that user upon user’s desired service contract. However, in this scenario I see a service upsell opportunity when carrier enables a 10Gbps service on-demand as an upsell to the 1GE dedicated port, this scenario can require two ports, one the dedicated 1GE (which is the traditional service and priced accordingly) and one 10GE port which will connect to the on-demand provisioned core and delivers on-demand service. A good use case for this upsell is for enterprise IT large backups. The enterprise IT for instance, can use this upsell connectivity for large data backups which will be performed much faster over a 10Gbps capacity, for the duration and allocated calendared time, for instance once a week.
by Niloufar Tayebi
Thank you for your interest and very good questions. On the first question regarding the local loops and service price; in fact, we have done the business case study for a provider leasing fiber in the last mile. The price of the fiber in the last mile was factored in as a monthly subscription fee for access to the on-demand network. The additional usage of the network is charged based on utilization. I would suggest checking the blog post regarding pricing on-demand services, which was part of this blog series:
http://www.ciena.com/insights/articles/A-service-providers-guide-to-on-demand-service-pricing_prx.html
Regarding the second question, with on-demand services, the bandwidth that is provisioned on the core will become part of the pool of capacity available to the on-demand service users upon their reservation. This is a time-shared model (as opposed to traditional over-subscribed methods). The on-demand service user will reserve the bandwidth for the requested period, upon completion of the time the provisioned bandwidth is released back and available to other users. The allocation of the network resources and the reservation of resources is done by packet switching (either OTN or Ethernet) and the programmability of these resources is done by controller, in this case, Blue Planet MDSO. In terms of multi-vendor capability, Blue Planet Multi-Domain Service Orchestrator (MDSO) uses Resource Adapters to communicate with the third-party controllers.
by Paddy Gibson
Assuming your sports stadium example above, how do you overcome the obstacles of having to provide (and therefore charge for) :
1] Local Loops - unless the local loop is part of the BoD network or Dark Fibre, you would require the equipment of two different suppliers to communicate together seamlessly, or pay for the full service on the local loop.
2] Day1 Bandwidth provisioning - the full bandwidth would have to be made available on the core network, to allow its scalability, i.e. if a customer required a permanent 1GE circuit, but required the flexibility to allow periodic, regular or random short term scalability to 10,40 or 100G.