Technically Speaking

The new year is almost upon us and so it’s time to look ahead. What will be the hot trends in network timing, and what technologies will change the synchronization game in 2020? 2020 will see more applications requiring greater levels of network timing accuracy, and that means the migration to IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) will accelerate. This is already happening in many verticals with examples in the power utility industry, financial sector, cable networks and in enterprise data centers ...

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that our cities are getting more crowded – particularly at the curb. Once used by payphone booths and newspaper kiosks, the curb has become the prime area for the congregation of “micro-mobility” options such as e-scooters, e-bikes, rideshare services, as well as old-school mainstays which include taxis, delivery vehicles, public transportation and, oh yeah … pedestrians ...

With a new year and the start of a new decade only three weeks away, it’s time to look forward. What developments can we expect to see in the world of network function virtualization (NFV) in 2020?

After years of acquisitions in the SD-WAN space, there was a pause in 2019. But the overall churn continued. The biggest news was ADTRAN entering the market with their SD-WAN offering. I think that 2020 will be much more active. There are still too many SD-WAN players, and I predict some will go away – either through acquisitions or fire sales ... 

After working on network functions virtualization (NFV) for seven years, I’m happy to see it succeeding in the marketplace. Why has it taken so long, what’s changed, and why do I say it’s winning? The driver for NFV was to bring the power of the cloud to the telco network. Specifically, telcos wanted to be able to leverage the technologies that were enabling rapid growth by the cloud providers (e.g., Amazon, Azure, Google and IBM) and over-the-top players (Netflix, Facebook, etc.), including ...