Many businesses and workers have realized that despite the ongoing pandemic, work operations can still take place remotely – and with little disruption.

That is all thanks to connectivity networks, both residential broadband and cellular networks. Nearly every application, such as enterprise software, development tools, meeting and video conferencing tools and payment systems, relies on these networks to connect users with the public/private cloud.

Imagine what would have been the case if this pandemic took place in the 1980s or 1990s when connectivity networks barely existed. Imagine the loss of productivity of workers who would probably be sitting by their landlines and shuffling papers, while juggling all the chores at home.

Thanks to the pervasive connectivity available in the 21^st century, business operations and life can go on with not nearly as much disruption. Yet the situation has reminded us of a few areas where networks can become even better.

Future networks must go back to basics first

We all have experienced some frustration with dropped calls or choppy video, where phrases such as “Let me switch off video, so you can all hear me at least” or “Let me try to dial back in” have become commonplace. And if the broadband or cellular network went down even for a few moments, you would be running around trying to find the right spot to talk, or frantically switching on and off your modem or access point. Such moments create a less-than-desired experience not just for us, but for the entire team involved. 

So, what does this mean for networks? Yes, high-speed broadband, whether mobile or fixed, matters a lot, but the service experience matters more. To deliver a great experience, at least for the most used services such as voice and video, networks need to incorporate four basic tenets.

1. Availability and reliability

Equipment must be working and available for doing its job. The availability service level agreement, or guaranteed uptime, of most network nodes ranges from 99.99% availability (4.38 minutes of downtime per month) to 99.9999% availability (2.63 seconds downtime per month), and the target goal for service providers is “six-nines of service,” or “carrier-grade” availability.

But it is not enough to be available. Networks must also be reliable. This means that when the equipment is available, it is working correctly 99.999% of the time with no faults.

For example, if a router is working but drops a packet, it will be less reliable. The good news is that current networks are designed for very high availability and reliability. Yet when traffic surges, customer care calls surge with complaints of slow speed, broken connection or poor application experience.

Future networks must make it a priority to ensure even more availability and reliability. This means viewing it from an end-to-end perspective, and from an end-user perspective rather than from a node-by-node or equipment perspective. There need to be mechanisms to get full visibility of where exactly the SLA gets broken (that is, transparency must be on SLAs right to the end-user level, which service providers can commit to customers, and actually be penalized if the SLAs are not met).

2. Automatability

There is a reason why availability and reliability SLAs are not 100%. Unpredictable things can happen which may or may not be in the operator’s direct control. That is why “automatability” matters now more than ever before.

Until now, the basic requirement was to make all network nodes “serviceable” within a given time frame. Going forward, this concept must evolve to “automatable” with zero-touch. Even if a part of the network is not available or behaving reliably, it should be automatically determined where the fault is, and be fixed right away with no human touch.

That’s where artificial intelligence and machine learning come into play. The entire network needs to become automatable in terms of operations and maintenance in order to deliver the right service experience. Until the pandemic, zero-touch functions such as automation, provisioning, commissioning and operations were mainly about reducing the operating expense of sending people to the site and increasing the speed of the operation. But now we have realized the impact zero-touch has for human safety.

3. Security

For operators, security has often taken a back seat to make way for faster and faster speeds. But as the pandemic has revealed, the biggest deterrent to a great user experience is a hacked connection. As cybersecurity incidents continue to rise significantly, attack surfaces have gone up and threats become more and more sophisticated. Users have become actively aware of security risks and are concerned about secure network connectivity.

Security posture must be embedded and end-to-end and work cohesively – from appliance to network to application – rather than as singular point solutions that are invisible to one another.

4. Elastic capacity

It is not economically feasible for operators to pre-provision all the bandwidth that any user or application may need at some point. But it should certainly be possible to extend the capacity at the moment they need it and move it elsewhere when they don’t. This means networks should be able to elastically scale capacities on demand.

That might sound obvious, but it requires a complete network architecture transformation toward cloud-native, distributed and network slicing that can deliver services from any point in the network. This can be a lengthy and arduous process, but the good news is that many operators have already started that transformation journey.

Future networks: a platform for innovation

We have seen how networks are sustaining real world value in a virtual environment, but the potential of future networks goes far beyond sustaining value. It is about creating value. With the advent of the cloud plus 5G plus AI era, networks can become a platform for innovation in the virtual world – one that can change education, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, retail, tourism and much more. This requires not just handing a new network to enterprises to see what they can do with it but partnering with them proactively to seek new ideas and fin- tune networks accordingly to enable the next generation of innovation.

Strong networks go beyond just delivering a seamless connectivity experience. These networks have the potential to spur the next era of innovation.

Kanika Atri is senior director of strategy at Juniper Networks Inc. She wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Image: geralt/Pixabay