Juniper Networks predictions for 2021

A new year is approaching and Juniper Networks is exposed by proposing its vision on 7 new trends that will influence the future of Service Providers in the course of 2021.

With the pandemic, the importance of the edge grows. Never before have networks played a fundamental role. Companies, schools, telemedicine, social life: everything has gone from personal to virtual interaction, and interactive video calls with many participants have become a fixture of many people’s daily lives. We have seen heavy use of streaming (especially video), for example for remote staff training, and heavy use of online games, all phenomena that have led to the growth of CDNs. Service providers responded quickly to increased traffic, avoiding higher latency and decreased quality. Next year, service providers will double their investments in edge cloud, to bring applications and data closer to the end user and connected devices, to further enhance the user experience, support new low-latency real-time applications, and make more efficient use of the capacity of network transit.

The pandemic and network security. While security has often been overshadowed by network speed, the pandemic has shown that cybercrime is hoping to harness crises to its advantage. This is especially important in light of the second crash and the fact that remote working is now the new normal, opening up new opportunities for hackers. In 2021, companies will invest in “Enterprise-at-home” solutions, with a view to security, so that everyone final point They are protected, wherever they are. It will forever change the way service providers build and manage their networks, particularly when it comes to delivering managed services to business customers.

The pandemic highlights the need to prepare the network for the unknown by focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The health emergency has transformed the world from physical to virtual overnight, leaving service providers with the enormous responsibility of making optimal experiences available in real or near real time, under peak traffic conditions. Traffic patterns have gone from mobility to fragmentation and the line between consumers and businesses has blurred. This means there will be long-term changes in the way service providers build and manage their networks.

Next year there will be a greater focus on preparing networks for the unknown.‘: There will be an acceleration of investments in agile and open network architectures based on the principles of cloud, elastic capacity on demand and automation and security to guarantee the pre-established level of experience. By increasing the focus on the service experience, we can expect orchestration, AI / ML, service assurance, and automation technologies to play an even greater role in service provider network operations. This can ensure quality of service and simplification of operations as network traffic increases, in light of increasingly dynamic and complex traffic patterns.

Juniper Networks indicates that residential and commercial networks will become a: Following the shift to telecommuting, the line between a residential broadband network and a business broadband network has become increasingly blurred. So when something goes wrong, telcos must fix it quickly, because even a home network is now critical to business. Apart from theactivity time, this will become a key factor for companies to decide which service provider to use for their employees to ensure a strong infrastructure and coverage that also reaches rural areas. Today, the concept of business continuity takes on a whole new dimension.

the 5G will close the gap for rural areas left by fiber: Since the introduction of VDSL connections, in many countries this technology has also been chosen as an alternative to FTTC me FTTH; VDSL made it possible to connect many rural areas in Europe with a reliable connection fast enough for today’s usage standards. Juniper Networks believes that 5G will help support this transition by fostering the deployment of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), which will be much easier and cheaper to implement than FTTH, ensuring superior coverage.

Rise in monetization opportunities for 5G. According to Juniper Networks, service providers are investing heavily in 5G networks, despite the pandemic shifting operational priorities, causing some slowdowns in pilot projects and production deployments. 5G is now a reality that offers operators new monetization opportunities. Thanks to very high speeds, huge connection density and very low latency, in 2021 we anticipate new developments in consumer applications (e.g. gaming, AR / VR / MR), in vertical markets (e.g. private 5G networks ), in consumer offers that include content. , on enterprise broadband and managed cloud services and FWA services.

Distribute 400G deployments beyond the data center in the cloud. While the new network economics makes it possible to support continued growth in bandwidth demand, we will still see the 400G’s footprint grow. Now that the big cloud providers are riding the first wave of data center and in wide area networks, we foresee a 400G boom in national service provider networks and in various other situations (interconnection of data centers, core, peering and CDN gateway, among others). There will be large-scale deployments of the 400G on the WAN, especially in the second half of the year, thanks to the availability of cheaper fiber optics that will reduce Opex, with fewer ports to manage and consumer pricing models that will allow operators to introduce updates gradually. Beyond 2021, 400G will make its appearance on metro networks, where 5G will bring even more traffic and network density.

Open architectures are still a hot topic, Open RAN is now a fact. Juniper Networks notes that the shift of service providers to open architectures will continue increasingly savage in all areas, from open access (such as Open RAN and Open OLT), to open broadband, to open IP / optics and to the open core. . For mobile operators, Open RAN is no longer a question of “if” but of “when”. The society believes there will be an acceleration of Open RAN adoption globally, with RFPs, testing and deployments, as many operators have committed to democratizing radio access, primarily to foster diversity and innovation. Large-scale commercial deployments of Open RAN are relatively recent, but we will see a strengthening of the Open RAN ecosystem, maturing of technology, and new types of partnerships that will fundamentally change the way networks are installed, managed, and used. for the creation of value.