Abstract
Overview
Mobile operators have made substantial investments in legacy protocols. Third
generation (3G) data networking have brought carriers into the IP world and
fourth generation (4G) data will require an all-IP backbone. Though a
considerable amount of knowledge about IP has been accumulated within mobile
operators, their IP investment is relatively young when compared to both IP
itself and their respective legacy protocols and infrastructure.
This report targets primarily network design teams within mobile operators and
assumes that the reader has a good understanding of IP protocols and related
technologies; it addresses most, if not all, of the problems and questions
that such teams will face while evolving a legacy backbone into an all-IP one.
More specifically, the following subjects are addressed:
- Optimising an IP network for use as a backbone for a mobile operator: Not
all IP networks can deliver either the functionality or the critical level of
performance that a mobile backbone requires. This section focus on the
elements that should be fine-tuned and modified so as to produce the desired
behaviour.
- MPLS Traffic Engineering as a method to maximise the ROI and effectively
utilise all available resources within the network. The benefits that
pseudo-wires (PWE3) introduced.
- OSS/NMS enhancements to support the new functionality
- VoIP - migrating from a circuit switched voice transport into VoIP
transport:
- Pre-requisites imposed on the IP backbone.
- The effect of codecs on the service and how their parameters should
match each network
- How to calculate the VoIP bandwidth (hidden overheads) starting from the
traffic on the legacy network
- Mobile backhaul: How to use the IP backbone to backhaul 3G and 2G traffic
- LTE and IP issues and challenges
The report also presents vendor-specific solutions. For the executive level
readers of the report; we also present how each choice affects and impacts
budgets and operating expenses and evaluate the companies and the services
they offer. The vendors evaluated in the report are: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco
Systems, Juniper and Tellabs.
Key Benefits
- Understand the optimization path of an IP/MPLS network in order to support
transport for a mobile operator
- Learn VoIP details for a legacy operator
- Major vendors review and evaluation in general with regards to the subject
and specific for:
- End to end integrated solution
- Time to implement on a network
- Issues and challenges
- Network stability
- Prospective services
- Operational expenses
Audience:
- Mobile operators
- Network Design teams working their way from legacy protocols into IP
- Executive Level individuals wanting a concise view of their choices and
how these choices could affect their companies
- Vendors
- Infrastructure suppliers seeking to better understand the future of IP for
mobile operators
- Software developers seeking opportunities for IP based OSS and application
software
Questions Answered in Report
- Which are the most important VoIP details
- What is the approach of specific vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper
Networks, Tellabs, Cisco Systems)
- How each vendor is measured against the same metrics and how choosing each
one would affect budget and operations
- hat is a mobile backhaul solution (drivers, technical specification,
synchronization and clocking, migrating from a legacy solution)
- How to prepare and optimize an IP/MPLS network to act as a core network
for a mobile operator (IGP tuning, MPLS-TE, MPLS VPNs, OSS/NMS, other
important details)
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Preparing and Optimising the network
- 2.1 IGP
- 2.2 MPLS
- 2.3 Other
3. Traffic Engineering
4. OSS/NMS support
5 VoIP
- 5.1 QoS
- 5.2 Bandwidth Calculations
- 5.3 QoS Misconcept
6 Mobile Backhaul
- 6.1 Drivers
- 6.2 Technical Specification
- 6.3 Reference Model
- 6.4 Sync and Clocking
- 6.5 Migration
- 6.6 LTE and IP
7 Vendors' approaches
- 7.1 Alcatel-Lucent
- 7.2 Cisco Systems and Juniper
- 7.3 Tellabs
8. Conclussions
9. Closing note
10. ANNEX I - References
11. ANNEX III - List of figures
12. ANNEX IV - List of Tables
13. ANNEX II - ABBREVIATIONS
14. ANNEX V - About the author
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