When it comes to data transmission, 5G is just the beginning

If there’s a technology that’s tailor-made for the world we’re currently living in, it’s 5G. Everything we do seems to be based on the need for speed and connectivity. High bandwidth and low latency allow hospital doctors working in remote ICUs to communicate with and send information back to their main campus quickly. 5G will also be invaluable in smart cities with dense networks of devices that need to communicate and share information in real time. Then there are the more everyday tasks that power our lives, like video conferencing and more.

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But while 5G has the potential to be the engine that moves all the individual bits and bytes in these examples, what is really happening to those bits and bytes? How can we take advantage of 5G infrastructure?

Move data faster

The answers to these questions lie in how data is handled as it moves across 5G networks. Enterprise organizations will need an intelligent data services architecture that enables them to access and transmit data from multiple sources. Ideally, this architecture will consist of automated data pipelines that connect edge and core locations and run on a flexible and open infrastructure that supports multiple clouds. Underlying all of this is the 5G network that will drive data movement between point A and point B, and to multiple other points as necessary.

The combination of automated data pipelines and flexible serverless cloud computing infrastructure is well suited to the kinds of data-intensive use cases that 5G intends to support. Serverless computing, made popular by Kubernetes-based platforms and the open source project Knative, does double duty, accelerating application development and supporting large-scale data workloads without running resources 24/7.

The serverless edition includes a feature called “Events,” where events are triggered as data flows into a workflow and across a data pipeline. In that pipeline, data is placed into a unique bucket and analyzed in real time as it is ingested (first event). This solves the pesky data locality problem, where data is located close to the compute. This helps eliminate the need to send data in batches from edge locations to the core. Upon discovery, that data is immediately placed into another bucket (second event), then another (third event), and so on until it reaches its final destination.

Providing critical information in emergency situations

To illustrate this, let’s consider a potential use case that may be all too familiar to some of us. Imagine a hurricane has just hit the coast, causing miles of damage. The insurance adjuster responding to the cyber disaster is located at the edge of the network.

The photos and videos she takes are automatically transmitted back to the remote office via 5G. Before they go, they need to be inferred for real-time processing and analysis. The initial results will be delivered to the core location for deeper machine learning and training, and the findings will be pushed back to the edge. As the model becomes smarter, the system will be able to use image recognition at the edge location to automatically create and deliver estimates.

All of this can happen very quickly due to the serverless nature of the infrastructure and automated pipeline. And with 5G, the speed of transmission can be very fast - close to real time.

Only move what is necessary

To sum up, moving data is always less than ideal. It can reduce productivity and cost a lot of money, especially when the information reaches terabytes or even higher. Even with 5G, this type of data transfer will still be expensive from a financial and productivity perspective.

Instead, organizations can choose to simply move subsets of their data. This is especially true in industries subject to regulatory constraints. For example, an automaker needs to retain certain video data sets collected by its self-driving cars. They can only transfer that data from the edge to the core and discard the remaining information locally that does not need to be retained.

These types of organizations will want to consider implementing a platform that supports high-performance data streaming and the rapid exchange of large data volumes. They need to be able to categorize, tag, and potentially store data. The developers working on the open source Kafka project have done some excellent work in this regard.

Bringing 5G Home

5G will be a cost-effective game changer by providing a communications infrastructure that offers a high-speed, reliable way to enable true data availability from anywhere. Moving data from an exponentially increasing number of devices to the edge of the network for processing will enable 5G to improve efficiencies in agriculture, energy, manufacturing, and many other industries. Reducing latency in data movement will open new opportunities to improve health and safety. And, moving more data faster will enhance experiences like streaming, conferencing, and augmented reality.

However, mobile networks are just the beginning. Organizations will need the right infrastructure and intelligent data service architecture to drive the value of the 5G Home — whether “home” means the edge, the core, or both.