By Dean Bogdanovic, founder and CEO of Volta Networks

Networking and Routing

5G will give us a significant leap forward in capacity and capability over 4G and will launch us into the age of "everything connected," with IoT, connected cars, automated factories and more. However, these applications don't tolerate delay - they are low latency and bandwidth-hungry. How will networks and routers need to change to be ready for this new era?

Here are five predictions for networking and routing in 2020. 

Predictions:

1)    The Rise of Disaggregated Routers - next year, disaggregated router architectures will disrupt the service provider router market as CapEx shifts away from legacy routers to investments in greenfield buildouts that set the stage for new revenue opportunities. Service providers will begin significant field deployments of open networking as the only cost-effective approach for greenfield applications, such as 5G transport networks. (In a recent blog post, the Telecom Infra Project DCSG sub-group announced field trials by Telefonica and Vodafone.)

2)    5G, Enterprises and Industry 4.0 - we predict that 5G will be the catalyst for service providers to unveil a new generation of services for the enterprise market. Service providers will use network slicing to deliver greater bandwidth with low latency, and this will allow enterprises to truly evolve into Industry 4.0 models. Aggressive investments in 2020 will set the stage for the first revenue from this new generation of services in 2021. (Roy Chua, principal at AvidThink, stated "...we'll see a new wave of disaggregated solutions in networking...I see the rise of a new generation of cloud-architecture, cloud-scale networking fabric, and network functions.")

3)    NetOps Automation - software agility and automation will become critical network operations processes which will require a central point of control with a common northbound interface using carrier-grade standards such as YANG service models.

4)    Open Networking Goes ‘Down Market' - small and medium service providers will quickly adopt open networking, taking a cue from the experience with Tier-1 rollouts, with the goals of reducing CAPEX/OPEX and improving service agility. Smaller providers will be aggressive in their rollouts giving them an immediate advantage.  (Javier Gavilán, Telefónica's chief technology innovation officer and director of core, network platforms, and transport, stated that the company is committed to an open networking strategy to facilitate the ongoing transformation of their network.)

5)    Small Providers Not Open to Open Source - given their size and software development resources, only the very largest service providers will be able to make the necessary internal investments to use open source in production. Small providers will not embrace open source options and will rely on support from commercial suppliers. 

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