Understanding UNI (User Network Interface)

Dear Friends, 

The year 2018 is coming to a close and this is the right time to write something on request of somebody. I had provided an article explaining Provider Bridge and Provider Edge concept where I touch-based upon the aspects of bridging and tunneling. Well I believe the article needed a prequel and that was to understand the different interface types that we have in the data networking. 

The networking that we do for data services are very dynamic and there can be several combinations of port-types and service types with domains realizing one important aspect and that is to carry the traffic from one point to another with reliability, security and prioritization. 

There are two kinds of interfaces that we have

UNI ----- User Network Interface

NNI ------ Network Network Interface. 

Today my post will concentrate only on the UNI aspect as I do not want to make this a very lengthy post. People may get grossly bored to read a lengthy post as for one I have noticed, the new generation lacks some kind of patience. 

What is UNI? 

In a very short and crisp definition we can say that UNI is the interface that connects a customer to the network. UNI port is an entity of the provider, however it interacts with a customer port or an interface. Please note that I have mentioned the terms port and interface separately. The reason being that a particular physical port may carry several logical interfaces that may be of UNI nature. 

Figure-1 Representation of a UNI

The figure above visualizes the definition of UNI. 

However, the concept of UNI is deep and needs more elaboration. For this we need to understand the concept of VLANs. A VLAN is a concept where we can break the broadcast domains to different smaller domains without involving the routing. You must be knowing that a switch breaks collision domains and the router breaks broadcast domains. However, what can be done in order to break a broadcast domain within a switching network without involving routers is to use VLAN. 

The VLAN gives a kind of identification to the packet or frame that is coming to the switching device as to which service that is should follow. VLANs are of 4 bytes and that are appended to a standard 802.3 frame. 

We see the structure of VLAN below. Disected. 

Figure-2 Dissection of the structure of VLAN

The VLAN is appended in the frame and it is providing the identification of the frame to follow a service. Here the main important thing is to see how the VLAN is appended in the frame. The frame can be untagged (without a Vlan) or it can be tagged (with a VLAN ID). Basis on this we have the two different types of interfaces of UNI. 

Figure-3: Types of UNI port

The types of UNI are the the basis of how the VLAN is treated in the service and the traffic is mapped. This is the thing that we will see in detail below. 

1. Access UNI port:

Imagine a situation where there are three customers who are all sending untagged frames. However the WAN which is carrying the traffic is a common WAN. How are we going to segregate this traffic. There is one way to do it by leaving it on the Mac Learning and bridging concept. The concept over here is that every device will have a different MAC and based on the MAC filter there will be communication and we will have one common LAN. However, this aspect has some disadvantages. 

Figure-4: Situation where three customers carry different traffic

> What happens in the unlearned state? 

> How will the traffic be treated? 

> What happens if one customer is sending a broadcast? This will affect the performance of all other customers. 

However, we cannot impose the condition on the customer to tag these frames. If we do that we are putting conditions on the customer and this way we will have to put similar conditions on all other customers, which is not a good idea. 

Here the thing is to have an access UNI port. 

The access UNI port accepts an untagged port on the LAN and then appends the VLAN on the frame of customer and then forwards it to the WAN. 

The flow is explained in the figure below. 

Figure 5: How the access VLAN UNI works

Here you see that the customer 1 sends the untagged frame and then it reaches the access port. Here the access port adds a VLAN ID to the frame and this travels through the WAN. On the other side when the frame is coming out the VLAN is matched and stripped and the original frame is received by the end. 

Points to note: 

1. Access VLAN ports in the UNI append VLAN in the ingress and match and strip the VLAN in teh egress. 

2. This action is like attaching a unique envelope to the untagged frame and taking it out on the other end without distorting any information. 

In our case we can have the following scenario for our three customers. 

Figure-6: How the three customers will be segregated

Here we see that every customer is connected to a different access port and so we put the access VLAN accordingly to identify the customer. Also note that the customer 2 may have a different drop point than customer 1 so this has to be organized in that way. 

2. Trunk Port: 

Once we understand the Access VLAN port functioning understanding trunk port is very easy. The trunk port in this case is our WAN. The WAN port is not adding or stripping any VLAN however it does a validation of VLAN that it has to pass. In our case we will put a validation that the trunk link should only pass VLAN 100, 200 and 300. 

The algorithm is the trunk port accepts frames that are already tagged and then matches them with the validation. Based on that it forwards. 

So friends, this is about the UNI port. We shall see the functioning of the NNI port in a later post. Understanding the UNI interface is very important in order to do selection of interfaces in data traffic planning. Therefore, be careful in deciding the same. 

Till then have a fantastic New Years' Eve.... 

Cheers and a Happy New Year, 

Kalyan 

RSTP/MSTP Part –V How does switching take Place in RSTP and MSTP?

 Dear friends of the Telecom Fraternity,

I was writing a series of RSTP in 2013 and possibly, there are many things to catch up. I would like to divert your attention to this blog that was the fourth part of my RSTP series.

RSTP-MSTP part IV

It is from this blog we continue our journey ahead to this vast topic called RSTP. Generally, people believe that RSTP is for switching, but I had clarified before that this is a Loop avoidance Mechanism. RSTP makes the switching of services in case of Failure more salient because there is a transition of paths.

In this section, we will concentrate on a simple architecture and that is RSTP Ring. As explained before we optimize the ring with a selection of optimal blocking port in the service.

Figure-1: RSTP ring topology example

Now in this ring let us understand that there is a service from the root Bridge to N-2 with SVLAN 200 and another service from Root Bridge to N-3 with SVLAN 300. This can be shown in the figure below.

Figure-2 Service configuration in the RSTP domain

To understand the concept of service switching let us understand a failure scenario. So in our case we imagine that the link between N-1 and N-2 has failed. Definitely, the service will be routed from another direction. However, in our case we will see this in a step-by-step basis.  Please remember that a service switching in RSTP is not as simple as it looks. Because there are no predefined main and protection paths like you have in TDM or MPLS. Here the entire switching of the service from one direction to another is working broadly on two principles.

1. RSTP Re-convergence
2. Mac Learning renewal at all switching points. 

We will see all these happening but you have to remember that all these happen very instantly. Typically the re-routing time of the services in the event of failure in RSTP is 200ms. Note this is not 50ms and that is why it is not recommended to run voice services or any real time services involving voice in the RSTP network. This is the reason why RSTP is regarded to be a Non-Carrier grade method. However, for a normal http service or a https service it does not matter as there is a TCP retransmission always happening and so RSTP works very well.

So we see the figure below to understand the failure scenario. 

Figure -3 Failure Occurrence in the link

 After this failure has occurred the first thing that happens is that N-2 does not get the BPDU packets from the N-1 (its designated bridge). So a Root port transition takes place and the link that is between N-2 and N-3 becomes a forwarding link. One special thing to remember over here is that in the N-2 to N-3 link, which is the blocking one of the ports between N-2 and N-3 will be the discarding port. RSTP in this case will not have two discarding port. So we have two cases over here. 

1. In case the discarding port is N-2 and there is a Root port failure on the N-2 then the Topology Change request of RSTP will immediately come into action and N-2 discarding port will turn to forwarding. 

2. In case the discarding port is N-3 then the TC message is communicated from N-2 to N-3  and N-3 changes the port from discarding to forwarding. 

Here the critical part is the topology change notification message that is carried by the BPDU and this always happen after a minimum hold-off time which is 200ms. The difference between STP and RSTP is over here. In STP there is a wait of three hello intervals which makes the initiation of TCN happens delayed. This results to a switching time that is more than 3 seconds. However, when we talk about RSTP (Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol) the TCN notification are subject to port transitions in any switch. Therefore N-2 and N-1 will both have transition changes and will initiate TCN immediately after the expiry of the hold-off timer. 

Now after the TCN is communicated the new state of RSTP will be as the figure below. Please note we have not yet considered how the service is being rerouted, we are still seeing the first part of the switching and that is RSTP re-convergence. 

Figure-4: RSTP topology change

Now the topology change has occurred. But what is remaining still is the re-routing of the service. I told this earlier that RSTP does not have a pre-defined protection and main path so the service re-routing is happening plainly on the basis of Mac Learning. RSTP is a scheme that is used in the case of Provider Bridge networks. To understand what is a provider Bridge network please refer to my earlier blog post in the permalink given below. 

Provider Bridge and Provider Edge Networks

In this blog post you will find clearly how the traffic moves in the provider bridge networks. So as this is a provider bridge we see that for the service affected, which is the service with SVLAN = 200, the mac learning has been done in the following manner of (Root Bridge - N1-N2). Now the path between N1-N2 has failed and there has to be a sort of notification to the root bridge to send the traffic via the other path. 

The self healing way of such a scenario is that the traffic stops and we wait for the expiry of the aging time of the mac table. The aging time of the mac table is a user configurable parameter, however the minimum value is 10 seconds. So technically if such a failure has occurred the service rerouting should take place after 10 seconds (aging time). 

Phew!!!!!! This is long. So the developers of RSTP thought of another approach and this was to flush the mac-table of every bridge that is involved in the RSTP domain. Therefore, the TCN also sends a command to flush the mac-table of all the bridges involved in a particular RSTP domain. 

Something like the figure below. 

Figure-5 Mac-Flush happening n all the nodes involved in RSTP

Here we see that all the points of the RSTP domain are flushed. 

Now it is anybody's guess what will happen after the flush of the FDB occurs. There will be relearning of mac address for the services. In this case the service with SVLAN 300 will have the same path of mac learning but the service with SVLAN-200 will not have the same path of mac learning. Now N-2 which is the destination point will learn the mac via N-3 and not N-1 and this will make N-3 the Designated Bridge for N-2 and the service will now be re-routed. 

Figure-6 Final Re-routing of the service

So here we see a complete step-by-step process of re-routing of the services. Tough but not so tough to understand. 

In this case please note, now the bandwidth distribution in the ring is not optimized and there can be a scene of congestion between the link of RB to N-4 and N-4 to N-3. Under such scenario the QoS will come to play and the RSTP domain has to be properly traffic engineered. 

What happens when the link restores?

Now we saw about the failure the restoration of the link is also treated like a seperate failure in this case. RSTP recognizes only topology changes and now with the link repaired there is another topology change. A similar TCN will pass through the ring and there will be re-convergence and the block port will now be as per before. The TCN will flush the Mac tables of all the bridges and this will lead to service re-routing again. 

So friends, pretty long blog post, but cannot help. In order to understand the switching part there has to be more description, which I have tried to bring in. But, we have just touched the tip of the ice-berg. There are lot many things happening beneath the skin of the water and to dissect it threadbare it would need another 50 blog posts. We will see the operational aspect of RSTP in multiple topology scenarios as well and dual homing cases. 

Till then 

See you.

Regards, 

Kalyan 

Keep thinking!!!! Keep Reading!!!! Keep Evolving!!!!

How to do things differently in Telecom?????

I remember the last blog-post that I had written. Telcos do not need engineers. This invited a lot of censure and on the other side showed the mirror of reality to many telco veterans and contemporaries. I had ended the blog by saying what is needed then? Well here I am to make an effort to answer these things.

Change is a continuous process and not that what will be valid today will be valid after five years. Technology changes as we speak and so does the methods to manage technology in a great deal.  So let us understand what are the new things that we should adapt to. I believe the members of the telecom fraternity should have reptilian tendencies these days in order to survive and be a positive contributor of this industry for a long time. We will classify these things as What is In and What is out?

1.    IN: “Work with me”  OUT: “Work under me”

The most critical point of management is the degree of authority. Authority is a responsibility and not just a right of seniority. However when authority becomes dogmatic then there is definitely a problem in the management style. There is an old saying “People join companies, people leave bosses.”; The saying unfortunately is true till date. Instead of this, it is required to behold a sense of "espirit-de-corps" that should prevail across the ranks. Vertical conflicts are a thing of past. Intellectual conflicts are the new things to watch out for. Ideas are nobody’s monopoly and definitely not a privilege of seniority. Therefore it is always necessary to take your juniors with you. Working with has a lot of advantages than making work under.

2.    IN: “Opinions of Juniors” OUT: “Approvals from Seniors”

Another very rebellious statement, but true! Telecom is an industry that is always shaped by fresh ideas. Fresh ideas cannot be expected from veterans of 10-20 years old, unless there is an unbelievable streak of innovation, which is rare in the Indian context. Any fresher that comes to your company is an asset. Not because you can make him/her laboriously, toil over mundane works but harvest new ideas from him/her. A fresher has a lot of imagination because he/she is undaunted by experiential difficulties and obstructions. A fresher or your junior is just scared to speak because of the weight of position that you throw to him/her knowingly or unknowingly. They are not outspoken sometimes because they feel they will be judged. An approval is a formality but an opinion can lead to a breakthrough and this can only come from the new generation. Experiences are good but they are good to guide the new generation and make them aware of the mistakes that had been made in past. Not to scare them with positional authority. Approvals are needed, only for leaves and protocols.

3.    IN: “Affinity for Automation” OUT: “Justifying the Manual Cause”

Times have changed and so have the approaches to a problem. Gone are the days were we needed a lot of manual staff to manage things that are routine. These have to be automated so that the expectations from human resources can be raised. Contrary to the feeling that automation is a killer of human opportunities, I believe it is an opportunity to raise the bar of human involvement in the field of telecom from being grossly mundane to being innovative and creative. Today’s telecom demands innovation and creativity. This has to come from every levels of the organization. For being creative the human mind needs something which is essential and that is time to think. Of course, there is a corollary which says that work keeps humans busy, but definitely mundane work makes them morose and more like zombies who after some years become of no use. Every human asset of the telecom company has to be a generator of creative and productive idea and that is why automation is required to shun the monotony that is prevalent in the industry.

4.    IN: “Leaders”    OUT: “Bosses”

Explained this before and now again explaining it. It has been long this discussion of leaders vs bosses have taken place and the toying of this idea has gained a lot of popularity. Now is the time to implement and evaluate this idea. A leader is a person who gives direction and takes the initiative to walk the talk. A boss on the other side is a generator of instructions and orders. Industry definitely needs leaders. In war-time you need leaders who can take you safe from the cross-fires and inflict minimum casualties rather than a boss who is not on the field and just instructing from a safe haven.

5.    IN: “Evaluating Technical Edge”   OUT: “Compliance”

This is especially to the people who are evaluating vendors or technology for their implementation. Most of the time they are obsessed about compliance overlooking the technical edge. This leads to a lower shelf-life of the network. There will be solutions that are unique in the market and are innovative, processes have to be bypassed for absorbing those. Regular processes make regular companies. To be a company that stands out there has to unconventionality in the processes. Because unconventional evaluation makes unconventional companies. The idea of providing internet through hot-air balloons was not evolved from a telco. Because a Telco always focuses of compliance, obliterating anything that is unique and outstanding. This definitely has to change.

6.    IN: “Process Management”  OUT: “People Management”

This is the generation of the millennials. They are focused. They know what they want and how they want it. They are coming inbuilt with a management guidance system in their personality. They are intrepid and they are also adventurous. They are passionate at times and at times they are totally detached. A traditional people management approach is futile in managing this generation of people. There is a need to accept the fact that this is the generation with most of the ideas and that too the creative ones. They are a treasure and a treasure is not people managed but protected and preserved. So the requirement is to have a process and a management of the process that lets the company and the industry at large harvest from this amazing pools of knowledge.

So there are a lot of things to change. These changes will come. Today it may seem to be a giggle factor or some philosophy in book, but they will certainly come and I am hopeful. I am betting on this change because of a simple philosophy. “If there was somebody who could stop progress and change we would be still living in the caves.”

On that note, I leave you now to decide and comment on this post of mine.

Cheers,

Kalyan

TELCOS DO NOT NEED ENGINEERS!!!!!!

Yes, you heard it right. Telcos do not need engineers anymore. Infact the engineers that the telcos have are not more than a liability. The engineers, heads, managers, technical team….. a mere cost item, precisely the Right hand side of the balance sheet.

Surprised! You ought to be. I, myself am an engineer in this industry for the last 18 odd years and I am saying that. So why such a change? Why such an iconoclastic statement?

The reason is the definition of “Engineer” that the conventional telco understands is way outdated and way under the requirement. An engineer in today’s telco industry is a person who has to tread a line of processes, forgetting creativity and unconventional thinking. There are sets of ground rules that have to be adhered, sometimes breaking those ground rules is not only a flouting of policy but like a criminal offence.

Result! The same old thing repeating again and again. So called engineers become human robots following monotonous orders and doing the same stuff. Working in this industry in the conventional way does not seem interesting anymore and this affects the overall performance and nature of the company. Every technical staff, of the 100% effort that he/she makes, 90% is devoted to saving himself/herself from something. The attitude that shouts out loud, “I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE” is written everywhere in the company and finally we have “NOBODY RESPONSIBLE” in the entire structure.

The thing that happens is that nothing new comes out of the industry and we have same old services again and again without a shade of change. Scary job environment just mandates one thing and that is to keep your job. The best thing over here is when the planning guy feels insecure he does a charade of taking out a tender as if he/she were to design a NASA space shuttle. Tender process goes on for six to eight months and this is the time the planning guy looks out for another job. The outcome is either the planning guy has moved out to a new company or the tender is postponed for another six months.

Operations is funnier. Sometimes in order to see that they have work, they pray for some fault to come, and when it really comes and they are helpless, they just pick up their phones and make calls to the managed service partner, without applying any significant brains on the problem. As if they were hired in the company to just be telephone operators, they just drain the batteries of their phones and their energy bags shouting at the managed service partner and vendor. Once the fault is fixed, a thank you note to the vendor and a gallantry award from the operations manager who is equally scared of his/her job. Finally, a breather for another three months and life goes on.

IN ALL THIS CIRCUS THE BIGGEST CASUALTY IS THE CONCEPT OF “ENGINEERING”…. RIP

It is much better that such mundane activities are now being outsourced to machines through Artificial Intelligence and automation. Automation today can replace most of the monotonous work in the telecom industry and believe me most of the work is monotonous even planning. Artificial intelligence and automation comes as a boon and not bane. At least if not everything, it shows the mirror to the engineers at all level that they have to be “engineers”, because robots can be made by synthetic things as well.

Well after all this acerbity that I have spat out, I am surely expected to be trolled. After all telling the truth comes with its occupational hazards. However, I have spoken out.

So what is needed? What do we need to do in order to come out of this vicious circle?

Will speak about this in the next article.

Cheers,

Kalyan

IoT and Machine Learning

It was the year 1996 when I first brushed through the concept of statistics. I never knew that a boring field like this could very well be useful over making graphs. I always thought statistics to be a tool of a good argument to start with eg when I start a debate on poverty I throw a statistic that as per last survey around 27% of the population is below the poverty line. Never I could imagine that statistics was such a powerful tool until I studied it not as a subject but with more interest some months ago in my second semester of MBA.  Today's premise of my blog actually is more centered around statistics. Yes Mean, Median, Variance, Standard Deviation, Co-relation etc etc etc. I would like to simplify another aspect of IoT and that is Machine learning. 

Before I do that let me give you a hypothetical situation. 

Suppose you have a house that has a toaster, an alarm on your mobile, a microwave, a refrigerator, a dishwasher, a washing machine and an air-conditioner.  Now everyday more or less you wake up at 6 when the alarm rings you turn off the air-conditioner, then you go for a shower not before you have started the washing machine and the dishwasher at around say 6:15 AM. Post the shower you come out and you toast two breads in the toaster and have some baked potatoes in the microwave. These event happen around 6:45 AM and by 7:15 AM as you are having your breakfast you turn on your television to see the news in say NDTV.  At 8:00 AM you leave for your office.  More or less your routine remains the same from Monday to Friday and you are usually following this unless some untoward incident happens or it is a weekend or it is a holiday. 

Imagine that all your machines would get this pattern, well close to it with some anomalies and one fine day they themselves do the routine without your intervention. At 6:00 AM the Air-Con turns off on its own, the geyser turns on for the hot water. As you go into the bathroom say at around 6:15 AM the washing machine and the dishwasher turn on on their own to do the chores. As you are out of the bathroom by  6:45 AM you have your breads toasted and potatoes baked in the Microwave (Assuming you have them already in the toaster before) and as you take the plate to the drawing room you have your television turned on to NDTV talking you through the important breaking news of the day. 

Seems very very spooky, actually horrifying and to some extent like a sci-fi movie. Well, this not entirely, but partly is possible by means of Machine Learning. 

What is Machine Learning? 

Experts have talked a lot about this and if I would be adding some more technical details to it, I will not do any good. It would be more like adding a drop of water in an ocean. So let me do the reverse. Let me take a drop from the ocean and explain you how the entire ocean water is like. Machine Learning is an innovative way of making a machine aware of the patterns of events based on past events, timings and trends.  Basically if you turn on a machine every day say at 7:00 AM and turn it off at 7:00 PM and this is continuously fed to the machine as two events with respect to time then the machine would  learn a response some-what like the picture below. 

As you can see this is a pretty flat picture of the machine getting turned on and off. This is a fixed pattern and this can be fed to the machine and one fine day the machine can work on its own to turn on at 7AM and turn off at 7PM.  The information that is fed to the machine is the knowledge that you give it to work as per the inputs automatically and to take a decision of turning off or turning on. In short you make the machine learn about a pattern of it working and taking decision automatically.  The process in which the machine is able to make sense of the data that is fed to it by means of some external source or its own internal operations so as to take a decision of its own about some of its processes is called "Machine Learning". 

The example above is a pretty basic example of machine learning and in a practical world this is not the way it always happens. Also time is not the only dimension on which the decision of turning on a process or turning off a process depends on. There are many dimensions into place. 

Eg a thermostat of an airconditioner responds to the ambient temperature and the expected temperature settings automatically. In this case the AC is learning about the ambient temperature and is adjusting the compressor working as per that constantly and this is an example of machine response to machine learning automatically. Same goes with the refrigerator. A washing machine can take a decision on the amount of water that it needs to take in for washing based on the load of the clothes and this is also an example of machine learning. So you see my friends machine learning is not a very alien subject. It is not a subject that we are not knowing or we are not aware off. It is the same as taking feedback of an output and then adjusting the input as per the expectation and go on automatically. 

So then why so much brouhaha over Machine Learning? Well here is the difference. 

Whatever examples I have given you till now are about machines that are stand alone. A washing machine can take a decision for itself, and it cannot intrude or pass on the message that it has stopped to the microwave or some other machines for them to use the washing machine result as an input. A level of machine learning in this case is about automation of an entire set of machines in a house or in an enterprise as if it is a part of the same process. So machines do not work in Silos but in a collective way. 

Since this is somewhat like a symphony or like an orchestra you can also call this as Machine Orchestration. 

Randomness: 

Needless to say that when so many machines are involved in making the decisions based on many machines that are integrated the pattern will not be a constant pattern all the time. I mean the example that I had given before of your routine would not be same clock to clock every day. You have to be a robot to do that every day. Some day you may wake up at 6 and some day say even at 5:30 or some day at 6:30 and if the entire sequence of machine orchestration is based on your waking up time at 6:00 then things may go wrong. Like when you woke up at 5:30 you may be just going to the bathroom to see the geyser not on and having a cold shower or if you wake up at 6:30 you may see your washing machine started but no clothes inside. Basically randomness in a pattern can create havoc and so anomalies have to be accounted for. That is why machine learning does not depend on any one dimensional variable.  as you can see that if the X axis is the independent variable and the Y axis is the dependent variable then due to randomness of events there cannot be any fixed pattern that could be established. 

This randomness is much higher as and when the time duration is short. 

How to overcome randomness? 

As we discussed above randomness in machine learning is definitely a big problem. We will not be able to establish patterns. So how to remove these randomness so that we have a fully automated process by the machines so that there is virtually no error of them working automatically and there is a full fledged accuracy to the level of 99% that they work on their own. Well there are many ways of doing that. 

1. Introducing more independent variables: In a two dimensional plot we would not be able to show this however if the outcome of a dependent variables depends on many independent variables with conditions of any one or all of them have to be true then the probability of randomness would decrease. Let us take our example that we had taken before about you getting up for the office. Now in this case we do not keep only time as an independent variable. We also have a motion sensor in the house and some CCTV cameras in your house that record your movement. Now we put a condition that when you get up the motion sensor gives an input and looking at the time the AC decides that you have got up and then turns the AC Off and turns the geyser on. However if you are delayed going to the bathroom the temperature of the geyser is lowered so that you have the perfect temperature. It is only when you drop your clothes in the washing machine and you go to the washroom and turn on the shower the washing machine turns on. So in this case the shower is telling the washing machine that you are already under the shower so washing machine can turn on. Washing machine tells this to the dishwasher to turn on. In this case we see that the operation of all the machines are relative to the operations of others. This process goes on to create a kind of a chain reaction process till you are out of the house for the office. 

2. Studying the pattern over the days: Another way of reducing randomness is not to increase the number of variables that are independent but then to study the pattern for a long time and develop a kind of an algorithm inside the machine with some error margins. As the number of samples and inputs become higher the accuracy increases and the margin or error reduces substantially. It is a common rule in statistics that with the increase of the sample size the standard level or error reduces. Sampling error due to randomness comes down. In our case the sample size increases as we see this routine happening daily again and again and again. Every day the machines record something in them and develop a pattern. When they see that the relative error of two consecutive events have become considerably less than what it was before then it develops an algorithm of automation. 

However, nowadays we want immediate result of everything. We live in an age where we believe that 9 women can give birth to a child in one month, well on a lighter note. So option -2 alone is not viable as the entire system would take sometimes a lot of time to just learn the patterns. Also the moment it sees a spike or a variance the learning process would start again till there is normalization of the error margin. This would mean that the machines would more and more number of times just keep on learning and never do the things we want to do them on their own. So we need a combination of option -1 and option-2 to reduce the randomness in the machine learning techniques. 

Machine Orchestration and Integration:

A central process that manages the working of the machines on their own based on the independent variable inputs and respective machine algorithms is called as a machine orchestrator and the process is called machine orchestration.  Look at the picture below to understand more in detail about the same. 

There is a central Machine Orchestrator of the brain that is controlling different machines by giving customary commands for the processes. However the Orchestrator is not self sufficient. It gets inputs from the independent variables. Also the machines interact with each other with their controllers so that each of them can talk to themselves and to the central orchestrator. The custom algorithm that is developed in the machine is communicated to the orchestrator. The custom algorithm, in red is a result of all the independent variables and the orchestrator also has a feedback of the same. So in case there is an anomaly the orchestrator has the intelligence to change the process flow or to even shut the process for a manual override. 

Summary:

So all in all machine learning is a process where the machines learn to become self sufficient in a step by step manner. Just like us humans from the day we are born to as we gradually age learn different things and responses to various situations. Machine learning is the same way in which a machine can be made this way of course with a great help from one of the most effective sciences, statistics and predictive analysis. 

So you see my friends, a time is coming when machines are going to be if not more intelligent in decision making then at least capable of decision making at least for the routine processes. Who knows one fine day they might even give us a competition. 

We will have more topics on this as I keep on exploring the fascinating world of Internet of Things, IoT. 

Till then keep evolving. 

Cheers, 

Kalyan

The IoT (Internet of Things) Skeleton

We were on our way back on a Sunday morning from Lokhandwala to my home in Thane. It is definitely a long distance to cover and we were commuting by train and then bus. Me and my daughter. Needless to say we were parched and very exhausted. While the bottled water in the station took care of our needs of thirst it was the heat that we needed to get relieved about. My daughter threw a question to me if we could just turn on the AC of our house while we were just 10 minutes away from there so that once we enter the house it would be cool. Really it was a question to ponder upon. Sometimes kids throw such questions and demands which really make people think. As I said in my earlier blog, "To see the future it is very essential to hear your kids to see them." This was a case like that and so begun my study of a new technology, IoT, Internet of Things. To study something the biggest driver is a purpose and in this case like in many cases the driver was a simple question. So today I take upon this opportunity to humbly jot down some points that make the IoT skeleton. 

I would like to give a disclaimer before you read any further that I am not an expert in this technology and I am still learning the ropes of the same. However, whatever that is learnt needs to be shared because knowledge is the only wealth that multiplies on sharing unlike any other wealth in the world. 

What is the motivation of IoT for a layman? 

While many telecom experts have written tons about this technology that is yet to see a good light of the day, at least in India and other developing countries, it is essential to know how can this technology benefit a person who is not tech savvy or who is not really a technical field person. After all we make things for the people and not only for those who have a deep and sound understanding of technology.  The motivation of IoT is to take the internet from a level where it communicates between persons to a level where there is a level of communication between devices to devices, devices to person and of course person to person. The present internet is people-centric and it always needs a kind of a probe or a kind of an user to be at one end of the system requesting or processing information. IoT on the other side gives a kind of power to Non-Living machines to take the part in a very important process which was in a way limited to the human world, taking decisions. We would be living in a world were machines at some point of time would be able to take the same kind of decisions we take with cognizance of the external and internal environment. The only thing that IoT does not address is the fact that it does not put any emotion to the machines and thank God for that. 

Skeleton of IoT:

It is not easy to explain all aspects of IoT in one blog post rather it is impossible. As Einstein said "Things should be made simple but not further simpler" so we would really want to explore this technology in bits and pieces. Today I am taking an example that answers the question of my daughter and that is to control the machines by some kind of control system and intelligence built in the network. Of course in later posts we will also see how these machines end up taking decisions on their own. 

A primary requirement of this would be to connect the devices by means of some method to the internet after all we are talking about "Internet" of things and this has to be connected to the Internet in some ways. For this the device which in the figure below are  Air conditioner, Smart Electric Meter and Refrigerator need to have a transmitter/receiver that can communicate on a wireless interface with the home SOHO. Also there needs to be a special kind of a Transmitter/Receiver in the SOHO router which can translate these signals from the devices to a legible format that can be read over the internet. 

Let us see the picture below and disect it piece by piece. 

Well it is very clear that on the left side there are devices connected to the SOHO and on the right hand side we have the internet infrastructure. 

LoRa WAN:

A LoRa WAN is similar to that of a wifi protocol the only difference is that it runs on 433MHz. Other bands can also be used, but I found the band of 433MHz to be more popular as this is long range and is less prone to interference in present situations. This is an unlicensed band just like the WiFi and can connect the devices to the SOHO router. Of course the SOHO Router should also have a LoRa WAN concentrator receiver that it may then put to the Internet side. 

Communication:

The communication is same as it is a normal IP communication. There is NAT in the SOHO that converts the private IPs to a public pool with a specific port number and then this is transferred over the internet to the subsequent application servers. Mind you that the user is able to control the system in this case only by means of a dedicated login to the application server either from the home laptop or a mobile device using a specific user name and password that is given for each device service or each device service group. A device service group is a collection of devices that can be managed using the same application by a common user id and password. Eg if you have all the appliance by a similar manufacturer then there may be a possibility of having a device service group for you and then you can control these devices using the same user ID and password. 

The flow of call is never from the user to the device directly it is from the user to the application server and then to the device and the reverse reporting is also in the same way. Well this is the simplest form of how you can setup the IoT in your network. 

Of course there are many devices these days that also do not require the LoRa interface and have an inbuilt WiFi receiver that can connect to your WiFi and there are apps to control that using your WiFi or also over the internet. However that is a different story. 

Addressing of the Devices:

Apart from IP the devices and the applications have a unique 64 Bit identifier just like the Mac Address. DevEui and the AppEui are what they are called respectively. These are unique addresses and are also sent in order for the application servers to exactly pinpoint the devices that they are actually accessing with the profile. 

Security:

There are three different 128 bit keys that the LoRa WAN operates upon. This is to ensure a proper secured session between the devices and the application. Because if this session is secure then and only then there would be a kind of integrity of the data reported by the devices to the users and the command chain that the user would provide to control these devices. Why? Because the media is fairly insecure (Unlicensed Band).  

1. AppKey: This is a key which is permanent and is known by the application and the device. This key is a part of the system and is predefined. 
2. AppSKey: This is the Application Session Key and this is generated when a session is established between the device and the application that is hosted on the application server. 
3. NwSKey: This is the Network Security Key and this is also generated when the data flow starts from the Device to the application. The NwSKey is basically from the Device to the end gateway, in this case the point where the application servers are connected to the internet. This basically secures the Network flow or establishes a kind of a secured tunnel for the device to communicate so that there is no tapping of information at any point of time.

The second and the third keys are generated during the session establishment and the data flow while the first key is predefined for identification. 

So my friends you see that how insecure it may seem to be it is not like that. There is a lot of lock and key present in the flow of data which makes the protocols inherently free from hacking. 

Use Cases:

Well there are many use cases of this. One it answers the question that my daughter asked. I can switch on the AC using an app on my mobile phone while I am just 10 minutes away from my house. I can look at my electricity consumption. I can look at my refrigerator cooling and adjust it accordingly also see whether it is full of goods or needs some refill. Of course in this basic model I will not be able to see if I have enough Ice cream in the refrigerator, that is a different case. 

What we look ahead at???

Well this is just the start. We can have a lot of things that we can do with IoT. We have not yet touch-based upon the decision making structure and how we can align devices or share device load in order to have a good use and optimal use of all the devices that we own. Basically from all the machines that our houses/businesses have in silos we bring them to a common ground where we can orchestrate or they themselves can adjust to the environment. 

Till then have a great day ahead and keep evolving....

Cheers,

Kalyan

OTT (Over The Top)...... is just the start of a new era

"If you want to look at the future... Look at your kids......."

Pretty strange words from me this time. Well, someone reminded me yesterday in my office that I also run a blog of technology and technical talks. But for some days or may be a lot of months I was suffering from a writer's block. I know it used to happen generally to authors of fiction but sometimes it really happens to part time bloggers like me. I was not getting an exciting topic to write about in simple words. A complication that can be made simple for others has always been my goal but then I was seeing a lot of confusion rather than complication and thus decided to stay out of it. Now that the air is clear and thanks to some children that I am in touch with including my 10 year old daughter understanding the changes that our industry, telecommunication demands has become simpler. 

So we come to the point. OTT or Over the Top, why did I select this topic for discussion. Well because there are various reasons for this and these reasons are listed below. 

1. We are seeing a heavy demand of video and interactive content and this is not a downloaded content but a streaming content. 
2. The concept of WiW WiW WiW which means (What I Want, Where I Want, When I Want) is on the rise. 
3. People are tired of seeing the same old type of broadcast censored content on the Television and want to see a more mature and "in" content and in much more clarity. 
4. Internet penetration has increased and now people have become content hungry and want to spend more and more time on the Internet to watch new things. 

The consequence of all these new wants led to the rise of a new star, a new entity in the telecom market, which is not regulated, which is cheap and which demands a lot of bandwidth; OTT or Over the Top. 

Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime, VIU, ALT, Adda and many more applications with our very own Youtube is a classical example of OTT. 

And this brings to seeing our future through our kids. All my daughters' friends do not watch TV. In-fact I do not remember them watching TV for the last six or seven months that I have continuously monitored them. I have tried to note their behaviors and watching patterns. Boys and Girls both. They are all into watching content on their personal devices. Entertainment has become more of a personal preference than a family affair and this has given a rise to the concept of OTT.  

But the biggest question is are we as telecom engineers and the industry at large ready to answer the needs of our future? Are we really going in the direction which has been clearly indicated by our future generation? The answer, well is a yes and a no both. Yes because we are being more innovative and fast. We took 10 years to go from 1G to 2G, 5 years to go from 2G to 3G, 2 Years to go from 3G to 4G and while 4G is still baking in the oven we are starting to talk about 5G already. So the development graph has been exponential nevertheless. No because we are not addressing some of the core fundamentals of this business which is resulting into huge CAPEX flows for the Operator without any substantial return. 

Difference in the Business Model:

Operators need to know one thing very clearly over here, their domination over the services is no more autonomous. When we talk about voice an operator owns the circuit and also controls the customer. A voice customer is an asset of the operator as he/she is actually the content without the copyright for the operator and previously was the cash cow of the operator. However now the game has changed. Customers with this new entity and more Data - Centric entities in the foray are looking for more Data oriented services. 

The problem with Data is that it is repetitive at times, it belongs to some other entity with copyrights and demands variable bandwidth portions most of which is much higher that what voice demands. Setting up the infrastructure to enable high bandwidth data oriented services is very high as compared to voice however the end price that the customer expects is really very less. So the question is how an operator can make money in this business? 

The answer is fairly simple. The operator has to consider itself as a content service carrier rather than a service provider. This business model is not new. In-fact it is a very old business model, a legacy one which was started by our very own Door-Darshan (The national television channel of India). The service to the customer is free of cost but the revenue is earned from the content and the advertisements that come  in the channel. 

In the very case of OTT also the operator needs to know that major money is being minted by the OTT player who has just put a content server somewhere physically or in the cloud and is using the multi million dollar infrastructure of the operator to make billions of dollars for its own. It is but fair that the operator demands his pound of flesh from these OTT players. An operator ought to negotiate terms like advertisement revenue share or advertisement placement in the webpage or app that is being distributed by it. This would potentially be the other earning opportunity for the operator and thus can make a lot of money for it. 

So the rule is simple. 

"STOP MILKING YOUR SUBSCRIBERS.......EARN FROM THE CONTENT."

Easier Said than Done:

While what I mentioned above may seem to be a logical conclusion towards the diminishing revenues that an operator is having for the services, it is really easier said than done. 

1. Over the years players like Facebook, Google and Amazon have become powerhouses of content. 
2. Google controls more than 40% of the internet content that is flowing world wide with its own innovative solutions. 
3. These content giants have become so big that it is apparent for every operator to give them a red carpet than to actually negotiate them on terms of service. 

Where there is a will.... There is a way....

Yes, it is difficult. Yes, some of us may think we have missed the bus and we have just landed in a big mess. There is no other option to sustain than to invest but expect very less in returns. However, invest where is the question. 

1. Invest more in creating sophisticated Data centers so that content hosting becomes easier for the content provider in your environment. 
2. Invest in networks that are more evolving and allows more software-centric features. Networks that can sustain the changing environments of the industry and are not use and throw. They are stable and at the same time evolving. 
3. Invest in manpower who are innovative. Encourage innovation and unconventional ideas. Remember the biggest industries in the world cropped up as a result of unconventional ideas and not "Grey - Hair Experience". 
4. Prepare for change faster. This is because we have seen exponential changes happening from the year 2000 to 2020 and we will see a lot of changes. 

But the biggest question is..... Are the telecom operators "Willing" to do this????

OTT delivery needs an infrastructure that is robust, interactive and very high in bandwidth and at the same time takes a very less OPEX. It requires the operator to be steady because once the OTT is in mobile it is fine but when it enters devices like Smart TVs or any other high resolution visual devices then it becomes a big animal. 

I may understand a factor of buffering when I am seeing a movie in my mobile but then when I see it on my $1000 Smart TV I want to see it un-interrupted and high quality and this leads to the operator to upscale the services for the same. The networks have to be device sensitive so that they can understand device based requests and serve accordingly. This means high bandwidth networks are now evident. The 100Gbps is now going to be a store in the last mile rather than just being in the core part of the network and the core will be a multi Terabit mesh connecting several Data-Centers and servers in a resilient manner. 

Multiple feeds have to run a the same time and this would also mean local instancing of application in the edges that would require virtualization in great proportions. 

Therefore my friends the future is there.... It is certainly not dark.... And if you feel it is dark... Have a look at your kids..... However, it is a time where we as an industry invest in knowledge and innovation. 

Cheers

Kalyan