5G Networking: Who’s in the Driving Seat?

Our new solution is a cost-effective route to reliable 5G connections – and the innovative services they make possible

Over the next years, people will increasingly expect 5G connections and the types of service they can support. And this will lead to increasing demands on service provider networks.

These services will need large amounts of bandwidth that will dwarf the already heavy demands on networks. On top of this, they will also require more in terms of control, latency and agility.

If service providers try to meet this challenge using their existing technology, their costs will spiral out of control. If they aren’t prepared, they could simply become overwhelmed.

But if they can adapt to the new business landscape, there is a great opportunity to create innovative new services that will power the future growth of their business.

Cisco’s new convergence technology – the capacity of DWDM without the cost

Up until now, service providers have had a choice if they’ve wanted to boost their network capacity.

One option was to build new fibres each time they wanted to increase their bandwidth and fill them up with single “grey” interfaces (that’s assuming they would travel far enough for each hop), or add incremental 10G dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) wavelengths.

The other was to invest in 200G coherent DWDM technology – a way of massively increasing the number of different wavelengths that can travel down existing fibres (it enables 96 200GB wavelengths to pass down the same line).

The problem is that until now, introducing coherent DWDM this deep into networks has been prohibitively expensive. To enable it, service providers have had to build out new network infrastructure including a transponder shelf, an aggregation router, and lots of interfaces between them.

But new Cisco technology gives service providers the opportunity to boost network capacity sustainably. We’ve created a streamlined router that integrates the IP and optical layers in the aggregation part of the network. It’s small enough to fit in your laptop bag and works using simple plug-in technology.

Laying the foundations for innovation

This new solution delivers the capacity advantages of DWDM, but at a much lower cost. And it also makes it much more affordable to introduce programmable networking technologies like segment routing throughout the network – not just in the core.   In short, it gives service providers a realistic way of supporting the innovative and agile services of the future.

Like the idea of stepping onto a driverless bus, the future might sometimes seem frightening. But when you build our new solution into your network, you customers can be confident that they’re in safe hands.

Find out more about how our converged solution can get your network ready for 5G.