Next Generation of Networked Experience

February 10, 2014, ISSCC, San Francisco—Susie Wee from Cisco talked about the evolution of network technologies and their impact on user experiences. The technologies are changing to offer better user experiences, and defining the needs for the this next generation of equipment is important.

The applications drive changes in networks over time. Early networks were built to be host-to-host systems. The Web emerged, with its mix of connections. As users found out about the technologies and capabilities, apps like voice and VOIP emerged, transforming the Web into a peer-to-peer network. The audio traffic changed to add video and later HDTV streams. Further equipment and device evolutions enabled the mobile Web, which created a multitude of new apps.

All the traffic needed better host systems, which evolved to become data centers and offered new ways to think about compute. The early versions of the data center had lots of machines, but the overall usage was fairly low. One response was to virtualize the computers to increase use, and the concepts were extended to encompass the network as a software-defined entity. Now, we are adding sensors and machine-to-machine communications to create and also manage large volumes of data through new analytic tools.

The new networks offer different experiences by addressing the architectures of the infrastructure. Increasing software and programmability allow greater flexibility and network agility. This new software-defined network follows the lead from the computer virtualization by offers better performance for an improved user experience. The other benefits include easier operator and management controls and reduced operating costs. The new structures, management apps, and improved APIs all contribute to more robust systems.

The greater flexibility and network agility augment collaboration, improve network virtualization, and change the face of software delivery and maintenance. Collaboration comes from the ability to conference across all platforms; mobile, desk, and conference room. In the future, we will also see collaborative video.

For example, a video conference would allow shoulder-to-shoulder whiteboarding with the screens positioned at a virtual 90 degree angle. Participants could look at the board or the person and even involve content on tablets. The system will allow sharing of “sticky notes” across the platforms.

The technologies for touch and gestures are considerably different from those on a tablet. The challenges are that a white board can have multiple users, and needs reasonable response times and low latency across the network. The interface needs to discriminate between a single and multiple users. This application will get better with better hardware.

In addition to the improved hardware, a good user experience needs simplification. Touch and gestures have to be modified for a large screen, and they have to coordinate multiple people in different locations. The participants will be remote and in the cloud. Some challenges include the UHD video capture, transmission delays, and encoding and transport. The variability of the end-points and network connections will require an adaptive transport of the networked video.

The network functions will have to be virtualized to manage variable bandwidth and deliver low latency. Developers will have to evaluate the hardware-software split as the core network functions move to host aggregators with switches and routers. The hosts will also run additional apps like security and services.

The functions that will move into the data center of large networks will include dedicated network devices, computers with hardware accelerators, network-application computers, and general-purpose computers. System managers will have to leverage all platforms for power management, infrastructure, and new software stacks. All of these will have to scale with increasing virtualization.

The network will need accelerators for fast packet processing like Intel’s data plane which offers lower flexibility with better performance in dedicated tasks. The need for network accelerators in the processing units started as small ASICs, and over time went from 14 to 2 ASICs. Now, the NPU (network processor unit) includes a fabric interface unit or a Power architecture processor in a SoC.

Next generation SoCs will include integrated optics controllers. Dedicated network devices need NPUs that can scale and manage the optics, possibly in silicon photonics. These intermediate and fabric interfaces will also have to have aggressive power management. Moving data at multi-gigabits per second consumes lots of power, and the throughput demands cannot be compromised for power consumption for speeds under 100 Gbps. In general, it is better to use multiple ASICs running at under 20 Gbps than try to incorporate the entire data stream into a single pipe.

The mix of heterogeneous hardware will determine the number of blades and change the space and cooling constraints. Software-defined networks will be more flexible and allow faster deployments than fixed networks. The SDN will also reduce the number of specialized boxes, increase the elasticity of compute, and reduce operating costs within a range.

The solutions and requirements will differ with different mixes of NPU, CPU, and required functions. Dedicated hardware is more power efficient than general purpose hardware and will have greater throughput. General purpose computers, on the other hand, are more flexible and elastic. Management needs to evaluate the mix to future-proof the entire system. Software-defined networks help the operating expenses and streamline operations.

The challenges are in the high volume of network elements. These include complexity, ability to troubleshoot, power, costs, management, and fragile or robustness of the system. The next generation will need new architectures and a change from the command line interfaces to a SDN, a physical-virtual interface. The network interfaces will have to collect information on the systems and allow control services such as orchestration and analysis of all functions from a remote terminal.

The new architectures are modular network solutions with APIs. Apps like security, QoS, and provisioning will be path and power optimized. Managing the access control lists and other administration functions needs greater automation. Service provider tools can help with the service-level agreements, routing, traffic engineering, orchestration, and other management functions. Security can be centralized for detection and fix deployment.

Apps drive innovation in silicon, and network function virtualization enables a different hardware and software mix across heterogeneous compute systems. The software-defined network will provide new capabilities to make the user experience easier and more enjoyable.