Recently, at the “GNTC2019 Global Network Technology Conference”, Chen Yunqing, Dean of the Beijing Research Institute of China Telecom Co., Ltd., said that the 5G era has arrived. Different from the 4G network, 5G is no longer just a pure technology, but will create an ecological .
In Chen Yunqing’s view, the important significance of 5G is to integrate technologies such as cloudification, SRv6, and various slices to serve new industries. To this end, China Telecom established the 5G Industry Innovation Alliance, which aims to gather 5G industry partners, explore 5G innovative applications, build a 5G industry ecosystem, and promote the maturity of 5G.
5G brings new challenges
According to Chen Yunqing, the development vision of the China Telecom 5G Industry Innovation Alliance is to promote the mature development of the 5G industry, serve the people’s better life, serve the transformation and upgrading of the industry, and serve the coordinated development of the economy through gathering strength and innovation and synergy.
However, there are bound to be some new challenges in the development of 5G. Chen Yunqing said that at present, there are the following five major challenges.
Challenge 1: Massive interconnection. Chen Yunqing said that 5G is oriented to three major application scenarios of low latency and high reliability, enhanced mobile bandwidth, and massive Internet of Things, and will generate massive innovative applications such as autonomous driving, telemedicine, smart homes, smart cities, and AR/VR. It corresponds to a large number of terminals. Mass terminals require massive address space and massive interconnecting circuits, and different types of applications have differentiated requirements.
Challenge 2: Ultra-high bandwidth. During the evolution of media forms from text, images, movies, AR/VR, and holography, the demand for network bandwidth continues to increase. Chen Yunqing said that after superimposing the needs of human senses, the bandwidth will increase exponentially. Therefore, 5G networks need to support ultra-high-throughput transmission to meet the ultra-high bandwidth requirements of various applications in the future.
Challenge 3: Extreme performance. Chen Yunqing said that traditional IP/Ethernet networks, as lossy networks, may also generate local congestion when the entire network is not under heavy load, resulting in performance losses such as delay, packet loss, retransmission delay, and throughput drop. Future-oriented applications such as remote surgery, industrial cloud control, and smart transportation that require extremely low-latency performance require the network to provide ultra-large-scale connections, deterministic low-latency, and zero-packet-loss forwarding for communication between people, people, and things. ability.
Challenge 4: Smart operation. The industry generally believes that 5G network is the integration of SDN, NFV, cloud and other technologies. In Chen Yunqing’s view, these technologies have promoted the development of the entire 5G business, but also brought new challenges. “How should we operate this cloud-based network after the network is cloudized!” Chen Yunqing said.
Challenge 5: Trusted Security. At present, the network security situation is grim and has risen to the national strategic level. Global cyber-attacks are frequent, and cyber-attacks are listed as the third largest risk factor in the world. Chen Yunqing said that the current Internet has hidden dangers such as initial design, system architecture, key capabilities, user habits, and operating mechanisms. How to cooperate with the 5G era to build a credible end-to-end network is also a challenge that must be faced.
New challenges bring new changes
In Chen Yunqing’s view, in the face of these new challenges, there will be corresponding technical solutions such as new business, new network, new form, new operation, and new security. The goal of China Telecom is to take CTNet 2025 as the lead, consolidate the basic network capabilities, introduce new technologies such as SDN, NFV, cloud computing, AI, etc., promote network architecture reconstruction, and create a new type of concise, agile, open, intensive, ubiquitous, and high-speed network, and ultimately realize network intelligence, business ecology, and operation intelligence.
New businesses are represented by edge computing and SD-WAN. Chen Yunqing said that with the vigorous development of the Internet of Things, big data, and big video, the existing network and cloud centralized deployment are difficult to meet the new business needs. Through edge computing, it has become a new trend in the industry to make the network and cloud migrate to the edge along with the “business flow”. At the same time, customer demands are driving the rapid rise of SD-WAN. According to Chen Yunqing, the traditional VPN technology is not complete. If you want to quickly adapt to traffic changes on an incomplete network, you need to apply SD-WAN technology to achieve rapid service provisioning through technologies such as hybrid link access and dynamic path adjustment.
The new network is a new network protocol based on SRv6. Chen Yunqing pointed out that the traditional IP network is segmented. Although it has the ability of path planning and resource reservation, the configuration and state maintenance are complicated, and it does not have scalability. The lack of centralized control also makes its operation cost high. “SRv6 is a basic technology that is applicable to the Internet, and its stateless maintenance enables agile business provisioning, flexibility, security and reliability.” At the same time, Chen Yunqing said that SRv6 is still developing and improving. At present, Cisco, in conjunction with industry operators, OTTs, equipment manufacturers and chip manufacturers, submitted the IETF draft on July 8, 2019, defining a new segment type uSID (Micro segment).
The new form is mainly that with the transformation of the edge computer room and the adjustment of the network architecture, new forms of network equipment (virtualized network elements, customized equipment, and converged network equipment) emerge one after another. Chen Yunqing said that in terms of virtualized network elements (such as UPF, vBNG, etc.), the architecture of empty separation and centralized control is adopted to improve resource utilization; in terms of customized servers, mainly OTII servers; in terms of modular network equipment , Open and converged equipment has become a development trend.
The new operation uses AI to empower intelligent operation and maintenance. Artificial intelligence is a strategic technology leading the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, and has a “head goose” effect with strong spillover driving force. Ke Ruiwen, chairman of China Telecom, pointed out that AI is an important starting point for network intelligence and operation intelligence. Chen Yunqing said that China Telecom’s goal of intelligent operation and maintenance is to achieve intelligent processing of 60% of daily remote operation work orders, industry-leading E-Surfing HD/IoT service quality, pre-optimized wireless/Bearer King network, and five-star computer room energy consumption reduction 10%, complete the research and development and application of 5G base station intelligent energy saving, network high-precision positioning, and drone inspection capabilities.
The new security is to build a decentralized, endogenous and trusted network architecture. Chen Yunqing said: “In terms of security, we use some fusion technologies, because we feel that it is difficult to solve the existing security problems with the original security methods.” According to reports, China Telecom has adopted a combination of blockchain and underlying technology. To build a decentralized trusted architecture, the first phase of testing has been completed on China Telecom CNGI website. At the same time, the identification verification management technology based on IPv6 will provide device identification credibility in the era of 5G Internet of Everything.
Chen Yunqing emphasized that for telecom operators, the goal of the 5G era is to build a new type of smart network. “In the process of construction, we will face huge challenges and bring new changes. In the new challenges and new changes, we have actually ushered in the best innovation, and it is a fusion of innovation with various industries, including Internet companies. era.”
Responsible editor; zl
