Nokia Siemens Networks' Liquid Net solution readies operators for data tsunami

As the burden on local mobile broadband networks continues to increase, with an ever growing number of users expecting higher speeds and demand for capacity more than doubling every year, global infrastructure provider Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) now offers a solution that will help deliver services and content fluidly across a network, anywhere, at any time, with the launch of Liquid Net.

Nokia Siemens Networks' Liquid Net is a new way to deliver broadband that can easily adapt to meet changing and unpredictable broadband demand, which - globally - is predicted to increase 1 000-fold by 2020, with the Zettabyte age of the Internet set to dawn by 2015.

This makes more efficient networks essential in burgeoning telecommunications markets such as South Africa, which itself is set to experience a 12-fold increase in mobile data traffic over the next five years, with mobile data set to overtake mobile voice traffic by 2013.

“Our Liquid Net solution enables the networks of operators to self-adapt and meet the capacity and coverage requirements by sharing resources based on demand,” explains Manfred Rauh, Head of Network Systems, Southern Africa, Nokia Siemens Networks.

The demand for network resources is constantly changing depending on place and time. For example, in the morning, there will be a high demand for network capacity in the commercial areas of Johannesburg, and in the evening, it will shift to the suburban or residential areas. If there is a cricket game or concert happening in a city, the network will experience a sudden spike in traffic around that particular area.

“These sudden spikes in demand or changes in network traffic cause bottlenecks in different parts or elements in the network - in the radio network, core network or in the peripheral transport network. This often means that huge chunks of capacity can be left idle, with as much as 50% of a conventional core network's capacity dormant at any one time. Accordingly, Liquid Net unleashes frozen network capacity into a reservoir of resources that can flow to fulfil unpredictable demand, wherever and whenever people use broadband.”

Liquid Net achieves this by basing the network architecture on four key enablers. Firstly, by using automated, self-adapting broadband optimisation that makes the network self-aware of its operational status and the services being consumed, it can deliver services and content in a manner that ensures the best customer experience at the lowest cost. This is achieved through the use of built-in intelligence and real-time monitoring capabilities that allow the network to recognise where demand is coming from and instantly re-adjust itself to deliver the necessary capacity to match that demand.

Secondly, Liquid Net uses software-defined applications on multi-purpose hardware that are both highly configurable and can run on multi-purpose platforms to achieve flexible capacity across the network. As this enables the technology to run on legacy or next-generation systems, processing capacity can be pooled and re-allocated to where it's needed most on any network, according to the application and location requirements.

Thirdly, Liquid Net features an interlinked architecture that allows capacity and processing to flow freely across the network, allowing operators to break free of traditional siloed network architectures. This type of architecture allows a greater degree of peer-to-peer communication between network entities, empowering network automation and reducing bottlenecks within the network. In addition, Liquid Net channels traffic in the transport network along the path of least resistance and lowest cost between operator sites, which will significantly improve the quality of local broadband services.

Lastly, Liquid Net is an evolutionary solution, which means that operators do not have to change their entire network to adopt this technology. On the contrary, it is designed to help operators extract even greater value from their investments in their existing network infrastructure, which helps to mitigate the high costs normally associated with future network innovation. “Liquid Net takes a fully evolutionary approach that is non-disruptive, yet also transformational. This will help operators reduce the capital expenditure requirements associated with building out network capacity to meet growing demand over the medium- to long-term, and will protect existing investments while also future-proofing them,” Rauh explains. “This is a very important factor as demand for broadband services can be highly unpredictable, fluctuating between locations at different times, as people use broadband at home, at work and on the move.”

Explosive growth in mobile traffic and abrupt changes in broadband use can also occur when new devices are launched, especially in a market that has such a low smart-device penetration rate. Device software releases or updates to popular applications and over-the-top services can also quickly clog networks, leaving operators with little or no time to accommodate increased demand. The type of content being consumed on these devices is also inexorably driving traffic on mobile data networks upwards, with bandwidth-intensive video content already overtaking all other forms of content. High consumption wireless subscribers will, in fact, generate 1GB per day via mobile and WiFi by 2020. “Having the ability to accommodate these fluctuations and provision capacity based on demand also helps operators to improve customer loyalty and can open up new business opportunities,” he continues.

From a technical perspective, Liquid Net builds on the principles of Nokia Siemens Networks' Liquid Radio architecture, which self-adapts its capacity and coverage to match fluctuating user demand through baseband pooling, and adds Liquid Core and Liquid Transport functionality to the network. The Liquid Radio architecture also offers Heterogeneous Networks, which enable all network layers to be used as a logically unified network. Another aspect of Liquid Radio includes Active Antenna System technology, which supports multi-radio and multi-band access for GSM, 3G, LTE and LTE-Advanced, providing up to a 65% gain in capacity.

Liquid Core delivers services and content, and dynamically provisions capacity through Core Virtualisation. This enables any core software application to run on the network and ultimately, other generic multi-purpose hardware. Intelligent Broadband Management makes the network aware of user demand and enables it to adapt to it.

Liquid Transport enables the free flow of traffic across network layer by channelling traffic along the path of least resistance. Liquid Transport achieves more flexibility and scalability by making the optical transport layer, the lowest layer with the least total cost of ownership, more software configurable. It also introduces a multi-layer intelligent control plane to enable flexible, rapid and easy network operation and service provisioning.

“These elements can be implemented either separately in multi-vendor environments or in concert across an operator's entire network, to bring the full benefits of Liquid Net to bear,” says Rauh. “Where Liquid Radio was about supporting capacity growth and flexibility in the Radio Access Network (RAN), Liquid Net smartly carries the theme forward to the transport and core elements of the network.

“Perhaps most importantly though, while the components can be deployed as part of a multi-vendor solution, the combination of Liquid Radio, Liquid Core and Liquid Transport into Liquid Net speaks to holistic thinking around operator concerns and demands,” continues Rauh. “This creates fluidity seamlessly and intelligently across the entire network infrastructure, evolving the whole network so that the full potential of fluid capability can be achieved,” he concludes.

For further information on Liquid Net, visit http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/liquidnet.