Building the Network of the Future: Getting Smarter, Faster, and More Flexible with a Software Centric Approach / Edition 1

by Krish Prabhu

Overview

From the Foreword:

"This book lays out much of what we’ve learned at AT&T about SDN and NFV. Some of the smartest network experts in the industry have drawn a map to help you navigate this journey. Their goal isn’t to predict the future but to help you design and build a network that will be ready for whatever that future holds. Because if there’s one thing the last decade has taught us, it’s that network demand will always exceed expectations. This book will help you get ready."
—Randall Stephenson, Chairman, CEO, and President of AT&T

"Software is changing the world, and networks too. In this in-depth book, AT&T's top networking experts discuss how they're moving software-defined networking from concept to practice, and why it's a business imperative to do this rapidly."
—Urs Hölzle, SVP Cloud Infrastructure, Google

"Telecom operators face a continuous challenge for more agility to serve their customers with a better customer experience and a lower cost. This book is a very inspiring and vivid testimony of the huge transformation this means, not only for the networks but for the entire companies, and how AT&T is leading it. It provides a lot of very deep insights about the technical challenges telecom engineers are facing today. Beyond AT&T, I’m sure this book will be extremely helpful to the whole industry."
—Alain Maloberti, Group Chief Network Officer, Orange Labs Networks

"This new book should be read by any organization faced with a future driven by a "shift to software." It is a holistic view of how AT&T has transformed its core infrastructure from hardware based to largely software based to lower costs and speed innovation. To do so, AT&T had to redefine their technology supply chain, retrain their workforce, and move toward open source user-driven innovation; all while managing one of the biggest networks in the world. It is an amazing feat that will put AT&T in a leading position for years to come."
—Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation

This book is based on the lessons learned from AT&T’s software transformation journey starting in 2012 when rampant traffic growth necessitated a change in network architecture and design. Using new technologies such as NFV, SDN, Cloud, and Big Data, AT&T’s engineers outlined and implemented a radical network transformation program that dramatically reduced capital and operating expenditures. This book describes the transformation in substantial detail. The subject matter is of great interest to telecom professionals worldwide, as well as academic researchers looking to apply the latest techniques in computer science to solving telecom’s big problems around scalability, resilience, and survivability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138631526
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/22/2017
Series:	100 Cases Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President —AT&T Technology and Operations (ATO), is responsible for the corporate strategy function, technology development, network deployment and operations, and AT&T’s transition to a software-defined network. Donovan previously was executive vice president of product, sales, marketing and operations at VeriSign Inc., a technology company that provides Internet infrastructure services. At VeriSign, Donovan was responsible for leading its global sales organization, driving the expansion of broad solutions offerings, and integrating a global professional services capability. Before that, he was Chairman and CEO of inCode Telecom Group Inc., where he helped shape strategic direction and positioning for wireless network operators around the globe. Previously, Mr. Donovan was a partner with Deloitte Consulting, where he was the Americas Industry Practice director for telecom.

As President of AT&T Labs and Chief Technology Officer for AT&T, Krish Prabhu oversees the company’s global technology direction which includes network architecture and evolution as well as network, service and product design. He is also responsible for the intellectual property organization and Global Supply Chain. Krish has extensive background in technology innovation from his time at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Rockwell, Alcatel and Tellabs. He has previously served as COO of Alcatel, CEO of Tellabs, and CEO of Tekelec. He also previously served as a partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, where he assisted in developing information technology and communications start-ups. Krish earned a B.S. in physics from Bangalore University, an M.S. in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Authors

Chapter 1 The Need for Change

John Donovan and Krish Prabhu

Chapter 2 Transforming a Modern Telecom Network—From All-IP to Network Cloud

Rich Bennett and Steven Nurenberg

Chapter 3 Network Functions Virtualization

John Medamana and Tom Siracusa

Chapter 4 Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure

Greg Stiegler and John DeCastra

Chapter 5 Architecting the Network Cloud for High Availability

Kathleen Meier-Hellstern, Kenichi Futamura, Carolyn Johnson, and Paul Reeser

Chapter 6 Software-Defined Networking

Brian Freeman and Han Nguyen

Chapter 7 The Network Operating System: VNF Automation Platform

Chris Rice and Andre Fuetsch

Chapter 8 Network Data and Optimization

Mazin Gilbert and Mark Austin

Chapter 9 Network Security

Rita Marty and Brian Rexroad

Chapter 10 Enterprise Networks

Michael Satterlee and John Gibbons

Chapter 11 Network Access

Hank Kafka

Chapter 12 Network Edge

Ken Duell and Chris Chase

Chapter 13 Network Core

John Paggi

Chapter 14 Service Platforms

Paul Greendyk, Anisa Parikh, and Satyendra Tripathi

Chapter 15 Network Operations

Irene Shannon and Jennifer Yates

Chapter 16 Network Measurements

Raj Savoor and Kathleen Meier-Hellstern

Chapter 17 The Shift to Software

Toby Ford

Chapter 18 What’s Next?

Jenifer Robertson and Chris Parsons

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book lays out much of what we’ve learned at AT&T about SDN and NFV. Some of the smartest network experts in the industry have drawn a map to help you navigate this journey. Their goal isn’t to predict the future but to help you design and build a network that will be ready for whatever that future holds. Because if there’s one thing the last decade has taught us, it’s that network demand will always exceed expectations. This book will help you get ready."
— Randall Stephenson, Chairman, CEO, and President of AT&T

"Telecom operators face a continuous challenge for more agility to serve their customers with a better customer experience and a lower cost. This book is a very inspiring and vivid testimony of the huge transformation this means, not only for the networks but for the entire companies, and how AT&T is leading it. It provides a lot of very deep insights about the technical challenges telecom engineers are facing today. Beyond AT&T, I’m sure this book will be extremely helpful to the whole industry. I truly thank John and his team for providing this insight on best practices for this transformation towards software-centric approach."
—Alain Maloberti, Group Chief Network Officer, Orange Labs Networks

"Pinch yourself. AT&T - the big, old, slow telephone company - is completely transforming itself, and the Internet too. This book explains how, in 5 short years, John Donovan has led a revolution, turning around one of the largest companies in the world, retraining a workforce of over 100,000 people. In Silicon Valley it's said that 'Software is eating the world (of infrastructure).' AT&T is doing exactly that by moving everything it does to software.

"We invented SDN back in 2007 to solve the following problem: Networking equipment (the switches and routers that make up the Internet) were closed, proprietary and vertically integrated. Equipment vendors built badly-engineered products with poor interfaces and no means for customers to improve them; much like IBM built mainframes back in the 1970s. Put another way, the equipment vendors had (and still do to some extent) the Internet in a stranglehold. Google broke it first, by building their own equipment. As Google points out, this was about taking control more than saving cost. Nowadays we take it for granted that those who build and operate the largest networks can write, buy, commission, or simply download the software that defines how their network operates. AT&T is the first large telco and ISP to take on this challenge at such scale. I pinch myself because no-one would have expected AT&T to do this first. It's really impressive to see the grit and determination behind this revolution of our largest ISP.

What the AT&T team is doing epitomizes our original goals for SDN: To put those who own and operate the world's largest networks in control of the software that defines how their network operates. We wanted to hand them the keys. If they succeed, it will transform the very heart of the Internet."
— Nick McKeown, Stanford University, USA

"This new book should be read by any organization faced with a future driven by a 'shift to software.' It is a holistic view of how AT&T has transformed its core infrastructure from hardware based to largely software based to lower costs and speed innovation. To do so, AT&T had to redefine their technology supply chain, retrain their workforce, and moved toward open source user-driven innovation; all while managing one of the biggest networks in the world. It is an amazing feat that will position AT&T in a leading position for years to come."
— Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation

"Software is changing the world, and networks too. In this in-depth book, AT&T's top networking experts discuss how they're moving software-defined networking from concept to practice and why it's a business imperative to do this rapidly."
— Urs Hölzle, SVP Cloud Infrastructure, Google

"This is the most complete presentation of the approach to modernizing the national network as a software defined entity. The further vision of the national network as a Network Cloud allows the insights flowing from Cloud Computing to be applied to the services provided by the national network presenting them as a set of elastic services which can be ordered and rapidly modified to meet business demand. It also offers opportunities to manage this network and its processes in a more flexible fashion, well beyond the TMN model from the past. The book is well organized, clearly written, and provides the only overall view of the application of software defined principles to the evolution of the national network. Certainly a must read for academics as well as networking technologists."
— Frank M. Groom, PhD, Center for Information and Communication Sciences, Ball State University

From the Publisher