The mobile market will be vastly different 10 years from today. We will see two and a half billion more people connected to the internet, but also 50 billion more devices. Those devices are going to have a totally different consumption profile compared with the smartphone or dongle user that we have today. We will have a mobile market with mobile internet which has got to have flexibility in terms of how it supports the massive number of devices, signaling events, and bandwidth that will occur in the future.

To manage this exponential growth in mobile data, effective small cell networks need to take advantage of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Small cells help operators increase coverage, capacity, and services, effectively and have already proven to be vital element in mobile networks.  To better integrate licensed and unlicensed small cells, we have identified 5 fundamentals that are important to remember: Read More »

Tags: analytics, architecture, big thinkers in small cells, device, Enterprise, HetNet, mobile data, mobility, Service Provider, small cells, SON

Towards developing a Secure Architecture for the Internet of Everything, I plan to kick off a series of blogs around this pivotal topic.

In discussing security and the Internet of Everything, the first question that comes to mind is, “Which segment of “everything” is one referring to?”. A reasonable approach has been to understand the common attributes that crosses vertical segments such as Intelligent Transportation, Smart Utilities, Industrial Automation and so on. The Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) are general abstractions for the network infrastructure that links physical and virtual objects. In Cisco, we now refer to these abstractions as the Internet of Everything, IoE. The IoE describes a world where billions of objects have sensors to detect, measure and assess their status; all connected over public or private networks using standard and proprietary protocols.

Until a point in time around 2008/2009, there were more human beings in the world than devices connected to the Internet. That is no longer the case.  Read More »

Tags: analytics, architecture, internet, Internet of Everything, internet of things, IoE, IoT, ip, IPv6, M2M, Service Provider, sms

By Greg Scullard, Technical Leader, Cisco 

In recent years, catalogs have had a major role in allowing product offer and service creation sourced from complex value chains.

At the Management World conference expo held between 13^th and 16^th May 2013 and organized by TM Forum, which is a global, non-profit industry association focused on enabling service providers by providing agility and innovation, we are presenting and demonstrating, as Cisco Systems, the “Catalog Management in Digital Services Mash-Ups” as part of a “Catalyst” project in collaboration with a partner.

The goal is to use multiple product and service catalogs to communicate, expose and mash-up existing building blocks into new and innovative services in an efficient and easily understood manner among the players; the multiple catalogs are a key enabler for delivering and operating digital services in this environment. This Catalyst offers Read More »

Tags: catalyst, digital services, multiple catalogs, prime active catalog, Service Provider, TIP Interface

In the midst of tremendous disruption, it is impossible to tell where the global media industry is ultimately heading. But a recent analysis from the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) explores four possible future scenarios for the media industry. While they do not “predict” the future, the scenarios help build our understanding of possible outcomes — and how various industry players could be affected.

The Shape of Things To Come: Four Scenarios

We explored the ways certain industry developments could swing future outcomes. Combining these drivers into logical groupings (consumer behavior, regulatory requirements, technology, and macroeconomic conditions), we were able to define the following four scenarios, as shown in Figure 1. These scenarios are differentiated by consumer demand, industry structure, and content supply:

• Dark Ages — low demand, consolidated industry, and relatively low content supply
• Survival of the Fittest — low demand, fragmented industry, and high content supply
• Golden Age of Content — high demand, consolidated industry, and controlled content supply
• Wonderland — high demand, fragmented industry, and high content supply

Obviously, each of the scenarios will have different winners and losers. The financial impact and the implications for players across the industry value chain will substantially change by scenario. And in each scenario, distributors and infrastructure providers will need to consider different types of investments. Consequently, each type of player will need to adapt its competitive responses to the future scenario taking shape.

Figure 1.   Four Future Scenarios Are Based on Various Groupings of Industry Drivers.

 Source: Cisco IBSG, 2013

Following are examples of how two future scenarios could play out: Read More »

Tags: broadband, Cisco, cloud, cloud services, content, IBSG, infrastructure, media, media industry, monetization, over-the-top, regulatory requirements, service providers, video

By Andrew Yourtchenko, Technical Leader, Network Operations Systems Technology Group

As any geek, I find it a lot of fun to get some hands with the new technology -- be it a new gadget, new product or a solution.

It’s not very often that I have a chance to play with a whole new protocol. EANTC (European Advanced Network Testing Center) interoperability testing gave me such a chance. The bulk of the work happened on EANTC premises in Germany this past February. The overall activity involved many representatives from various vendors making their devices talk to each other. The goal is to test the protocols in several areas, including MPLS, SDN, and IPv6, but the highlight for me was the testing of MAP (Mapping Address and Port) -- a new protocol to enable the sharing of IPv4 addresses by several customer premise devices without keeping the state at the service provider end.

This protocol is being developed by IETF, and has two flavours, the standards-track “MAP” which uses encapsulation to transmit the packets, otherwise known also as MAP, and the experimental track “MAP-T” -- which uses the address family translation in order to send packets, instead of the encapsulation. Read More »

Tags: asr 9000, asr9k, ipv4, IPv6, Service Provider