Efficient BW Planning and Provisioning in Data Networks

THE MAIN ISSUE FROM TRANSFORMING FROM A CLASSICAL TDM NETWORK TO A MORE COMPREHENSIVE NEXT GENERATION NETWORK THAT HAS A HOMOGENEOUS MIXTURE OF TDM, PACKET AND OPTICS IS THE INABILITY TO MODIFY AND MOULD ONE'S PERCEPTION....

From my recent experiences (Some bad... Some good...Some "horrible")

My dear friends of the Transmission Fraternity, 

Good Day to all of you and wish you a very happy weekend ahead. In India, this is the time of Ganesh Puja and like any other colorful festival this is of a very high importance to the social and religious fabric of India. But... wait a minute...... how does Lord Ganesha figure out in our field of Telecom???? Confused? Well not so. 

Today let us understand the logic of celebrating Ganesh Festival and its significance to Telecom. Planning and provisioning in Telecommunications is much about taking the right decision in the most economical manner to optimize the network, so that the delivery and then the sale of the service is more and more on the profitable side of the business than just an obligation of delivering it. This is just like how Lord Ganesha, by his intelligent ways of solving problem salvages any situation without resulting to much of overheads and conflicts. 

A person who is actually designing the network in such an aspect so that it can generate long term revenue without investment of much of physical resource, should be a planner, a more scientific one, however one who is only doing it for the heck of delivering the service, is more of an implementer or simply a "Copy & Paste" person. If the network is not bringing profitable revenue, then for sure the planning of network has been wrong. More quickly it brings profitable revenue, more efficient has been the planning. Just like Lord Ganeshas ways, a planning engineer should be the revenue optimizer and reliever of technical pains that an organization may foresee to deliver a service. 

Let us take an example for understanding this:

There is a network of Wi-Fi and Mobility where there are  5 access nodes in the access rings with one NodeB each and one Wi-Fi access point each. The peak BW of a Node B is say 28Mb/s and that of the Wi-Fi is around 44 Mb/s.  There needs to be an access network planned for the aggregation of this 5 nodes.  How to do it?

There may be several ways of implementing this aspect and there may be several ways to deliver the services.  Let us see the conventional (less profitable) and the non -conventional (More - profitable) way of delivering this. 

CONVENTIONAL WAY:

The conventional way is the pure transmission way where every BW is important, whether it is being used or not. 

So the following calculation is used. 

5 Node Bs of 28 Mb/s = 5x28 = 140Mb/s 

5 APN of 44 Mb/s = 5x44 = 220 Mb/s 

Total = 140 + 220 Mb/s = 360 Mb/s

Conventional Planner of a good nature :

On a SDH back-haul network this would be taken to be a full 360 Mb/s of Provisioning which would mean a full ring of 360 Mb/s = 8XVC-3s or even 3XVC-4s.  Hence a ring of 8XVC-3 is established in the entire system of EoSDH with or without MPLS and then the following logical network is realized. 

As seen in this picture each and every access node has a drop one of Wi-Fi and one of the NodeB. The total Bandwidth expended in the ring is actually 400Mb/s or 8XVC-3. This is more than the sum of the entire peak Bw of all the sites. 

So the planner here is assuming the following and this is the mistake. 

> In this access ring there will be always peak traffic from all the NodeBs and all the Wireless APNs all the time. 

> There will not be any kind of treatment of traffic to which should be high priority and which should be low priority. 

> Both the services should get the dedicated BW, whether they are using or they are not using in the transport infrastructure.

However, there are some good things that the planner has done which can actually classify him to be a better data planner and having potential. 

> Planner has used less number of WAN ports. 

> Planner has used more instancing and is actually instancing the service in different SVLANs or different instances to avoid any kind of cross talk. 

> There is proper isolation between two Node Bs and two APNs of Wifi in the network. 

> There is proper isolation of Node B and APN in the same access node also. 

I am still assuming that the planner has done this, and if yes, at-least  the basics of data planning is clear to the planner. 

NON CONVENTIONAL WAY:

The non conventional way actually is more data-centric than more transport centric. Let us understand one thing to understand the non conventional way  of planning.  We had BTS and we had the BSC.  So each BTS had around 2 E-1s to 4 E-1s each. This would mean that each BTS is having a capacity to run around 120Voice channels at the same time. With some amount of compression this can accommodate 400 users also simultaneously. So if an area is having more number of subscribers did we increase the carriers. The answer was no. 

A thumb-rule calculation was the fact that for every 1000 subscribers you can actually spend an E-1. This factor was even higher in the case of mobility as there were good amount of compression and a probability of mobile subscriber leaving a site and joining another was very high. 

The only thing was that, this calculation was done by the engineers at the switching centres who are having an idea of the traffic quantum in  a cell site and thus used to give the figures to the transmission. 

This was when you are considering a 2G kind of deployment. However, when the deployment phase goes to more of packet based access (Where the last mile device is Ethernet Handoff) then this flexibility of BW allocation is not to the MSC or the RNC but it is more to the transport. This is because the handoff is now not a fixed multiple of 2Mb/s but a combined port of 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s. 

Not all sites will transmit the peak BW at the same time (Concurrence):

The non-conventional planner actually understands this philosophy of concurrence and  tries to reach to a rational BW in the access ring. The planner uses this concurrence phenomenon to actually reach to a conclusive BW and thus ensures that there is full guarantee of the High available services and there is good amount of availability of low class  services. 

Thus the planner initially does a good amount of ratio and normalizes it to the nearest VC-4 or VC-3. 

In this case the planner sees that the total peak BW of the entire service is 360Mb/s however the amount of traffic will never be of that level. 

Contention and Prioritization (What is important and what is share-able)

Out of this 360Mb/s the signalling and synch traffic (Mandatory and always flowing) accounts to 20Mb/s in the entire ring (2 Mbps per site NodeB or APN).  The rest are good amount of prioritized traffic. 

In the 3G there is a voice per Node B of around 4 Mb/s so that gives another 20Mb/s of committed traffic. 

So 20 + 20 = 40Mb/s of this traffic is totally committed and have to be provided in the line irrespective of anything else. 

The rest 320Mb/s is data and out of which some are priority data and some are non - priority data (Best Effort). 

the figure below explains the entire BW profiling. 

This is the figure that the user is deriving for the entire BW distribution. A high end packet service will contain many streams of data some of which are real time and some of which are non real time. The non real time are the ones that may not be susceptible to congestion as there is re-transmission, only thing that is affected in such cases is the throughput. Hence these services are given the maximum over-subscription. In this figure the Yellow portion is actually attributed to the Non - Real Time data.  Maximum over-subscription is done to this portion only. 

Let us see in the figure below how the BW is attributed and contented in the network. 

So due to this now the BW is provided in the following manner. 

20Mb/s + 20Mb/s + 160*0.5 + 160*0.1

= 20 + 20 + 80 + 16

= 136 Mb/s 

= 1XVC-4 or 3XVC-3

By this process a total saving of Back-haul of 5XVC-3 is done which is equal to 250Mb/s. So the planner is effectively saving 250Mb/s of physical resources and delivering a good service of around 360Mb/s in it. As the number of site increases the user can rationally increase the resources. 

So the final figure is. 

Now in this case when the Voice is of low usage the BW is apportioned to the Packet data. 

There is good prioritization. 

There is of- course good instancing. 

In short... The planner is not only thinking about service delivery but also thinking about Profitable service delivery. Definitely due to low usage of back-haul BW there will be less usage of Physical resources and thus increasing the longevity of the network elements and milking more money from it. 

Such planners like to make the company profitable and want to always have more RPU with less investment. 

ARCHAIC AND OLD SCHOOL PLANNERS:

While we discussed about good planners and very good planners, who try to benefit the network and some of them actually make the network as good profit engines by increasing the longevity, there are some who actually are physical resource guzzlers, and do not have any care of the amount of physical resource usage. They are just planning the network for the heck of service delivery and have no interest in network profitability. They are a pain to the sales personals in the operator industry as they totally reduce the profitability of the network and thus bring no substantial earnings from the service delivery. They are happy just making the traffic through and getting the ping from one side to another. The sales persons of such operators should pray to Lord Ganesha regularly, as each and every order marks in the overall reduction of profitability in the organization. 

Understanding the case above the old school of planning will actually realize the network in the following manner. 

From each access site they would pull two EoSDH trails, one for the NodeB traffic and one for the Wi-Fi APN. 

Resulting into a Logical Topology ( Only the Good planners would understand the word Logical topology though) like this. 

As shown in the figure above let us now calculate the number of VCs that are being used. 

For one Node B 14VC-12 Main and 14 VC-12  for protection Leading to 28XVC-12 each site.So for  5 such node Bs this is 28X5 = 140 VC-12s = 280 Mb/s 

For One Wi-Fi = 1XVC3 for main and 1XVC-3 for protection = 2XVC=3 = 100Mb/s. So for 5 Sites this is 5X 100Mb/s = 500 Mb/s

Total for all provisioning = 780 Mb/s ( WOOOOOW and they still think they will make profit!!!!)

Also let us now look at the number of ports. 

At each access location 2 wan ports are used and in the aggregate 2 for each access this makes 10 WAN ports as opposed to only 2 in the case of Good planning. 

So this means 10 Wan ports and as new access sites are added on the same ring this means more and more WAN ports on the aggregate. 

So in some days the Aggregate module is kept underutilized but the ports are exhausted. 

The planning is done in such a way as if the planner had some kind of an Animosity towards the rising profits of the organization and would like to cut it off by any chance. 

Well this was an example of Efficient .... Very Efficient  and Not at all Efficient way of deploying the same service. 

I leave it upto you my friends as to what you want to become. I would also urge the Sales people in the operator industry to rethink and revisit the technical aspects of their network. 

Telecom service provider is a business where the revenue (Top - Line) is an effort of the Sales people for sure but the Profit ( Bottom - Line) is dependent on how good the planners are in the conception and the implementation phase. 

Remember making more trails doesn't give money, running traffic on it does. 

May Lord Ganesha Bless us all on that note. 

Cheers!!!!

Kalyan

Viability of MPLS in a traditional network

My Dear Friends of the Transmission Fraternity,

I am sorry, I had to again go on a recluse due to various reasons, some busy schedule and some very urgent professional commitments. But here I am, and I would like to today discuss on one of the burning topics that is taking the Telecom Transmission Industry by storm.

MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching)

I know this is a kind of deviation from our regular discussions on the RSTP that I promised but trust me this is important. Why this is important? Well because most of the reasons that are being used to actually use/misuse this technology, especially in India is wrong totally trashy.

So now let us in a very pure mind understand the viability of MPLS in a network that is traditionally a transmission network based on TDM. Can you realize MPLS on it.

If you ask this in the market as an operator, who is trying to enter to the data segment for the first time, you will get very very different answers. Some yes and some no. Some people would tell you that MPLS can never run on a TDM network, some would tell you that yes if the end devices are routing devices and the TDM acts only as the overlay you can realize it.... Well to tell you the truth... These are all vague answers to your pertinent queries. In fact these are not "Honest" answers at all.

To substantiate my point, I would like to draw your attention on this link of Wiki which tells about MPLS. Neutral, short but enough for an operator / beginner to understand to evolve his/her network.

Wikipedia Link describing MPLS

As told correctly in this link MPLS is a Media independant technology, working in between the L2 and the L3 layers of the OSI layer.

So this answers your vital question that MPLS can be actually realized on the boxes that you have purchased to run the TDM network. It can co-exist with a TDM/ATM/FR network that is traditionally old and can also evolve to the new network that are more Ethernet oriented.

The million dollar question is how does this thing happen?????

Well as described in my previous blog posts, if you have read them, there is a concept of EoSDH, which stands for Ethernet over SDH.  An EOSDH trail is a clear infrastructure entity, or a carrier on the layer-1 that encapsulates the Ethernet traffic over the SDH media. This encapsulation happens through the means of GFP (Generic Framing Procedure).  The EoSDH trail or the cross connect acts as a simulation of the ethernet link in the SDH back-haul. Many people, as I said before, mistake this for a SDH trail in totality, however they are wrong as the EOSDH trails have 100% properties of Ethernet and basic properties of SDH inculcated. So this should be treated more like a embedded Ethernet Link than a pure SDH trail.

When you do not have the fibers to make dark fiber Ethernet Link or you have very little requirement of Ethernet Bandwidth, not justifiable to actually spend a dark fiber on the case then EoSDH is a big tool to actually optimize your network.  Here SDH is used as a carrier and not as a service, and the actual service lies on the Ethernet plain.

When this EoSDH trail also has abilities of Label Encapsulation and Traffic engineering then this becomes a trail that can be used to run MPLS on the existing box with existing SDH capabilities.

So how is a MPLS enabled EoS Different from a Normal EoS?

The infrastructure that is created by a normal EOS using only Ethernet is actually a infrastructure that is subjected to the L1 and L2 rules. Under these conditions most of the devices in the Ethernet layer would act as a Provider Bridge. A Provider Bridge is actually an entity that will do the forwarding of the traffic based on Mac Learning or MaC lookup at every point, whether this is the start, end or the transit point.

So in a provider bridge kind of a scenario all the L2 devices have to remember the MAC tables of the entire topology for each and every services. Also as the number of devices increase and the services go high up the number of Mac address entries in the forwarding table would also go High.

This is prevented by making of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and VSI (Virtual switching instance) in the network. So VSI is a mechanism that can segregate the services from each other and create a virtual path however, what the VSI alone cannot do is actually giving a dedicated traffic engineered path for each and every sevices across two points in a ring or in  a Network without Mac learning in the Transit nodes.

Below is a picture of how a provider bridge would work with a traffic flowing from point -A to Point-D.  For simplicity I have taken the path of traffic as a liner L2, we will talk about protections later.

As seen in this picture we can see that at every transit location there is a need to learn the MAC address. So the traffic from A to D needs to have vFIB learnings at A, B, C and D. Similarly a traffic from A to C will need to have this in A, B and C.

This method is called the method of  Bridging. At every point the traffic is forwarded or Bridged on the basis of the Source and DA using the MAC table. MAC learning is the essence of learning addresses and forwarding traffic.

Needless to say as the number of transit node will increase so will the number of lookup location and so will be number of learning instances.

A MPLS enabled scenario actually eliminates this. This is shown in the next figure.

 As you can see in this figure there is one more entity in Yellow. This is a logical path that is defined from A to D. This is called as a LSP (Label Switched Path) or more colloquially Tunnel.  Due to this tunnel the traffic which was subjected to a VSI/VPN in A and in D between two ports is not only between one access port and the tunnel.

So the VPN constitutes of on A side the access port in red and the tunnel in yellow and the same is in the D side. This would mean no switching instances in B and C.

So the Mac learning would only be required at the points A and D typically Edges, thus the point A and D are now refered as PE or Provider Edge. While B and C are only going to look at the labels and merely act as transit points without looking at the MAC.

Advantages of this:

Less latency and more scalability. This also ensures more end to end BW integrity, which we will, I hope so see in our next Blog Posts.

This also helps to realize a more point to point architecture in traffic forwarding without the invenstment of physical resources thus saving time and saving money.

What my friends need to remember????

It is not essential to replace the whole install-base that you have purchased with your hard earned money, just becuase you want to include MPLS. Understand the purpose of MPLS before dancing on it.

MPLS is a technology, which is agnostic to device types. The MPLS algorithm and software can be put into any kind of a device be it a L2 switch or a L3 router.

MPLS is a technology that deals with multi-protocol support so if there is a kind of argument on IPv4 and IPv6 be sure this is not MPLS as MPLS doesn't care about which internal protocol is being forwarded.  Many people would flash their papers and give you this dope.

At the end of the day it is the ETHERNET SERVICE  that is actually carrying the traffic, so this needs to be given utmost attention. MPLS is an underlying technology to enhance the delivery of the SERVICE.

 

 

 

 

Till then .... Have Fun....

 

Cheers,

 

Kalyan