It is often little things than make the end customer satisfied or unsatisfied. Even good and inexpensive service may be perceived negatively if it demonstrates a fault, even just now and then. As an example, we can name fluctuating system’s response during online gaming, jamming pictures while streaming a sports tournament, or voice stuttering during an important Skype call. What that for 99% of the time such a service works fine if it fails at the most critical moment? The customer will be annoyed, to put it mildly.
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In connection with SDN there are discussions about applications that are offered by this open network architecture. There is a new application interface that offers access to applications without regional boundaries while network functions are virtualized. The term Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is often mentioned in this context – it means functions that are in fact independent of SDN, while NFV can utilize the open nature of the SDN interface to the maximum. We need to deliver applications (network functions) to the customer dynamically, based on customer’s current needs. Majority of such virtualized functions will remain in the data center, being allocated to customers dynamically. But there are also functions that we would wish to virtualize, and these must be implemented at the customer. We need an open platform for terminal devices that would allow us to allocate network functions dynamically as needed, thus we need distributed NFV.
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Data communications are known for the variety of their communication protocols and interfaces. Throughout the decades of their development, various interfaces have been created for data transmission, while all these interfaces are dependent on communication protocols and devices connected to them. With each such new interface the complexity of the network has increased, while its maintenance has been extremely demanding. When we need to provide a service, whether to the customer or internally within the organisation, each new type of a physical interface makes service provisioning more complicated and expensive. Ideally, we would have a single physical interface able to provide various services.
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Internet connection is now commonplace, whether it is a home, a small business or a large corporation. Compared to its early times, Internet bandwidth is enormous. The goal has been reached from the user’s perspective, as we can stream HD movies faster than we can watch them. Thanks to high network bandwidth we can move most of the data to various data centers and clouds. Increasingly we are using applications running directly at the private or public cloud rather than our local servers. We are becoming dependent on data connection and we cannot work without it.
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Ethernet operators’ interconnection is now quite common, but Ethernet is mostly used only as a transport medium for IP transmission between two nearest network nodes. The actual interconnection of operators, ISPs and data centers is thus at the third OSI model layer, with IP playing the key role. However, there are many applications where IP ultimately does not meet application technical requirements, while also making solutions very expensive. Which is why we still use TDM-based circuits that meet high SLA customer demands. Carrier Ethernet connects these two worlds, i.e. the flexibility and the throughput of IP networks and SLA demands known from TDM networks. The Carrier Ethernet allows us to create a data circuit via multiple operators with an end-to-end measurement. Unlike TDM networks, the Carrier Ethernet offers higher throughput for much lower costs, even when compared with IP-based networks.
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The use of optical cables as a data transmission medium has been under consideration since 1950s. The first optical cables were laid in 1970s; however, their massive use has started later thanks to the significant decrease of fiber attenuation along with the development of related technologies, namely transceivers. Nowadays, optical cables and related technologies are commonly affordable, while laying of optical cables is considered a good and promising investment.
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New applications are ever more demanding in terms of bandwidth. Both in households and businesses there is an increasing number of HD video devices, it is common to synchronize cloud data, and the volume of data keeps rising; speeds below 100Mbps are therefore no longer sufficient. We need to get close to gigabit transmission rates, or at least multiples of 100Mbps. Because of high costs, we are unable to provide a special optical connection for each user, so we need to get over the last 100m using the media currently available.
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