The macro trends of convergence, virtualization, cloud, mobility and video are driving evolution of networks to meet higher uptime and bandwidth requirements
By Heena Jhingan
A network is no longer just about throwing together cables, switches, routers and other boxes and connectors. As any networking pro or CIO would know, stitching together an enterprise network today requires meticulous planning.
Increasingly, networking is one bit of the IT infrastructure that requires to be more futuristic. It is definitely not something that enterprises, irrespective of size, can afford to rip and replace with every technological development. Networks, thus, evolve with technology.
The present-day networks are at a critical stage of evolution, as virtualization, cloud, mobility and big data lead the IT trends. The converged systems approach that is currently being followed in data centers involves combining server, storage, and network systems together, along with the software to manage them. This trends is on the cards across data centers. Though at a nascent market at present, IDC predicts that converged systems with a growth rate of 54% per year will account for over one-third of enterprise cloud deployments in 2016.
Analysts believe since networking is composite term, it is difficult to gauge the growth of every component in isolation. Research firm Gartner pegs the Indian IT infrastructure market covering server, storage and networking equipment to reach $2.1 billion in 2013. As per the research agency, the new data center implementations to meet convergence and virtualization needs, combined with campus upgrades, and growing adoption of multimedia applications and mobility, are driving the networking market.
“Future demand and dynamics of the networking market will also be heavily influenced by these trends as they intensify, and other disruptive technologies like cloud, social and big data take center stage,” says Naresh Singh, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner.
Natarajan Viswanathan, Managing Director, India & SAARC of CommScope says, “The data center managers are under tremendous pressure to keep their networks up and running at all times, reduce expensive downtime, conform to budget and reduce energy usage in their networks, while planning for their networks’ upgrade path. This coupled with the rapid growth of virtualization, cloud and mobility has further escalated the pressures on them.”
Today, both employees as well as company visitors expect seamless connectivity, this further adds to the capacity burdens on the existing enterprise network both at the core and the campus.
The core and campus
At the core or the data center layer, virtualization has set its foot and is here to stay. Virtualization has become the catalyst of change, leading to changes happening across compute, storage and security. A large number of enterprise data centers in India have attained virtualization up to 60% or higher.
Virtualization changes the basic pattern of traffic in the network, Amandeep Singh Dang, Country Manager, Dell Networking explains. “In the past almost 70% of networking traffic followed a north-south pattern in tiered pattern, which is now altered to follow east-west movement across servers.”
There are multiple effects of server virtualization on the physical layer. First, virtualization eliminates a lot of discrete server hardware so there will be fewer individual network connections particularly Gigabit twisted pair copper connections. Second, hardware that is operating many virtualized servers will need higher bandwidth connections to both Ethernet and storage area networks.
The modern day data centers are leveraging more and more IT services through the cloud, which again is dependent on a robust network. Also, an increased uptake of video is compelling the CIOs to revisit their networking strategies.
“Some years back the enterprises looked at converging the voice and data for services like VoIP and now the networks need to geared up for video disruption, so there is need for improved bandwidth in the data center,” says Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager, HP Networking India.
10G Ethernet connectivity is becoming the need across verticals, be it telecom, education , BFSI or healthcare for that matter. Subhashini Ramakrishnan, Chief Technology Manager, Dax Networks, says, “10G Ethernet is becoming the de facto standard for server-storage communication. With servers and storage growing in capacities, performance and workload, there is need for equally large access pipes to support the system.”
On the campus end, there could be two situations either the data center is within the building or it is extended to the premise. Experts say with mobility and BYOD being unavoidable trends, wireless connectivity is equally important as a robust wireline.
Krishnamoorthy reasons that since mobile devices like smartphones and tablets do not have Ethernet ports, wireless is the obvious approach to connect these. “We see enterprises augmenting the number of ports to provide client connectivity. The traffic between the data center and the client depends on the strength of WAN or LAN.”
“Since the users at the branch locations demand a framework for collaboration, and same response time as the head office, the enterprises are now investing routing products that help in band acceleration,” notes Prem Nithin, Business Development Manager, Borderless Networks Sales, Cisco India & SAARC.
According to a recent survey by Brocade, 10 15% of all end points in campus LAN can be virtualized. “Campus LANs are moving to a virtual desktop world where reliability and high-performance networks will be key in delivering proper level of services, uptime and maintenance to support widely varied workloads,points out K.P. Unnikrishnan, APAC Marketing Director, Brocade Communications.
Of switches and routers
With virtualization coming into play, the switches have become denser and smaller, in turn saving floor space and power consumption in a data center.
“This may mean a shift from many Gig Ethernet ports to a fewer number of 10Gig ports and a shift from many 4Gig Fiber Channel ports to a fewer number of 8 or 16Gig ports. As a result of this, distributed switching architectures such as Top-of-Rack and Middle- or End-of-Row are prevalent in highly virtualized servers, explains Mylaraiah J N, Country Manager-Technical & Marketing, TE India Enterprise Networks.
Krishnamoorthy of HP points out, “The enterprises are focusing on smart, managed switches. Most of the enterprises were using 10G switch to aggregate at the core, they are now investing in 40G to prepare for the future.
Cisco’s Nithin seconds his thought. He says the networks need to be intelligent. It should be able to identify priority applications and devices. For example it should be able to recognize bandwidth hungry applications like video and initiate auto-provisioning for the priority devices.
According to IDC, the growth in the Ethernet switch market will largely come from 10GbE and 40GbE in the coming years. The 4Q12 results of IDC show that the Ethernet switch market was particularly strong in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) with 15.6% year-over-year growth. Gigabit Ethernet is holding on to growth wagon largely in campus, aggregation, and network edge deployments.
Amidst all these developments, Dang says, the good news is that the cost per gig has become more rational. Even as number of employees now does not necessarily mean number of interconnects, BYOD has changed that concept. The employees could be carrying more than one device and they may not be company provided. The latest products have brought value to switching solutions that too at a more optimized cost.
As per market research firm Infonetics Research, the global enterprise router market is set to reach US $5.0 billion by 2017. With the rise in cloud services adoption, the firm does not see the buyers on a sustainable path with low-end routers at the branch, and it expects them to shift their spending back to branch and mid-range routers.
HP’s Krishnamoorthy observes two clear patterns. He says, ?t the lower end we see penetration of routers that support SIM (preferrebly two active SIMs) as then there is no need to buy the dongles and with two active SIMs, we can ensure uninterrupted connectivity.”
On the higher end, the enterprises demand router solutions that can support band optimization and deal with latency.
The cable tangle
Some industry players believe that technology innovations like virtualization, cloud and mobility have more impact on active networking devices like switches, but the structured cabling industry, which is basically passive cabling, is not impacted by these technology drifts. However, speed and bandwidth continue to be the key factors influencing this industry. Customers are looking beyond the ability to manage only the patching field / wiring closet.
The boom in data centers has also raised the bar on technology. Cat 6 system in copper forms the default choice of the customer with single-mode and OM3 seeing increased deployment. Customers are also aware of the need to deploy higher spec solutions e.g. Cat6A to future proof their network for high speed applications such as 10 G (on copper).
Increased installations of Cat6A have been witnessed in telecom and infrastructure projects that have scaled-up in structured cabling deployments. The older establishments that were on unstructured cabling are migrating to structured cabling when they renovate or upgrade their facilities. Uptake of 10G systems is on the increase, generally by the larger enterprises that are looking to implement the latest cabling technology to ensure longevity. Power over Ethernet (PoE) is used for security applications in verticals like BFSI, but hasn’t yet been adopted across large enterprises due to its limited capacity currently.
Martin Isaac, Manager Marketing India/Asean, Molex India Private Limited (Premise Networks Division) explains, “Fiber is still primarily used for backbone applications despite the improved viability of fiber as a to-the-desk solution with the ever decreasing cost of active equipment. Traditionally, installing fiber in the field has always been an expensive option based on the time needed and the necessary fusion equipment. However, the continued demand for bandwidth will ultimately lead to increased opportunities for fiber and the development of pre-terminated fiber solutions, where there is no need for on-site termination will no doubt increase uptake.
OM3 (standard for multimode optical fiber) is a cost effective option for data centers as it delivers 40G under 100 meters. That means OM3 can do 1G/10G/40G. OM4 would be the option to implement if lengths are over 100 meters.”
He feels OM3 is a good option as the standards stands today. With talk of the standards potentially moving from 40G/100G to 400Gb/1Tb in the future, this may change and OM4 may become the preferred standard. However, this has not commenced yet, or indeed been ratified.
“Each time a new standard is released we hear that fiber will replace copper as a platform of choice. With the release of the 40G/100G standard we see that the allowable copper length currently is 7 meters. This, combined with issue of alien cross talk, implies that the implementation of copper platforms at higher performance rates is becoming increasingly difficult. We may see the tipping point when copper tries to reach beyond 100G,” he says.
Mylaraiah of TE India observes that the industry is moving towards IP convergence with uptake of IP video surveillance for digital security applications. IP convergence means that the cable media will be either twisted pair or Fiber versus Coaxial. Using the twisted pair of fiber means more savings in space and cost.
However, he says that the challenge before the industry is not delivery of technology but that of skilled man-power in structured cabling realm. This is even more difficult when it comes to 10G & above networks.
“It is important to note that though structured cabling may constitute only 5% of the total network cost, but poor installation can render the most sophisticated active network device completely useless. Another challenge is that of upward growth in the price of copper. This is a cause of concern as it will add to cost of copper cables and ultimately the cost of the network,” he adds.
The next gen
As size of networks grows and large customers implement offices across multiple locations, management of networks is bound to become critical.
Sajan Paul, Director Systems Engineering India & SAARC, Juniper Networks, says, “The networking industry has come a long way and 40/100 Gig uplinks are quite common today. However, a key challenge in the networks is building the ability to scale in and out when required.”
Dang of Dell Networking agrees. He emphasizes on the need for enterprises in putting their money in networking solutions that support multi-vendor orchestration and smooth scale in and scale out.
To crack the manageability nut, the industry’s eyes are on Software-defined Networking (SDN). SDN comes with a control layer that sits between the infrastructure and the application layer and can give software as well as hardware related controls to the network manager.
IDC predicts 2013 to be the year of transition of SDNs from market hype into reality, with enterprise datacenter and cloud provider use cases coming to market and getting deployed and with this being the first full year of network virtualization, OpenFlow,and SDN applications. The SDN ecosystem, including the associated network infrastructure, will grow at an exponential pace, reaching a market size of $3.7 billion by 2016, and account for a remarkable 35% share of the Ethernet switching market in the data center, up from almost negligible penetration in 2012.
The research firm foresees major IT and networking vendors, including Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Citrix, HP, Dell, and IBM — continuing their shopping sprees for SDN technologies. Industry watchers expect SDN to also get a significant push from the mandate to switch to Ipv6.
