Architecture upgrades to prepare for 5G: 2018 network review

Looking back at the development of the network market in 2018, the themes highlighted are "speeding up" and "5G". In addition to making the network faster, operators are working overtime to build 5G bearer networks. What are the specific aspects? There are the following nine major upgrade trends.

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1. IPv6 will be fully commercialized

After nearly a year of construction, the three major operators will complete the IPv6 transformation tasks by the end of the year.

• China Mobile's IPv6 network currently covers 670 million users, of which 350 million are mobile terminal users and 136 million are fixed-line users.
• China Telecom will complete the IPv6 network transformation of its network infrastructure and mobile infrastructure in December. The main focus of China Telecom is on the transformation of IDC data centers, which has been completed by 93%.
• China Unicom's LTE network already supports IPv6 100%, the backbone network 100%, the metropolitan area network 97% (100% support will be achieved by the end of this year), and the access network is 99%.

From a business perspective, in addition to directly choosing IPv6 services, some cloud service providers also provide IPv6 and IPv4 interoperability services. New services are directly connected to IPv6, and existing services are interconnected through optional services, further reducing the cost of lane switching.

2. Home broadband starts at 200M

The "Broadband China" strategy continues to advance. The most prominent manifestation in 2018 is the "200M" starting point for home broadband packages in large cities. During this year's Telecom Day event, some operators have upgraded the speed of original 100M users to 200M for free, and the original 200M users to 300M for free. This has laid a solid foundation for the start of home broadband gigabit in 2020.

3. Network architecture upgrades to prepare for 5G

The pace of 5G commercialization is accelerating, and the three major domestic operators will take the lead in upgrading network architecture. China Telecom's CTNet2025 is aimed at intelligent networks in the future, and China Unicom's CUBE-Net2.0+ network architecture is to build a new generation of AI-enabled intelligent networks. China Mobile's NovoNet project integrates new technologies such as NFV and SDN. The network upgrades of the three major operators are all aimed at building an intelligent scheduling of internal resources, intelligent improvement of external services, and intelligent security.

4. Satellite Internet is gaining popularity

Space X plans to deploy 4,424 satellites in low-altitude orbit in 2018, and eventually 12,000 satellites. It will provide the world with high-speed Internet connection at a rate of 1Gbps and eliminate the digital divide. China Aerospace is also building the "Fuxing" system, which plans to launch 156 low-Earth orbit satellites. In the first phase, it will realize transparent forwarding of the sky-star-ground network, and in the second phase, it will realize the integration of the sky and the ground to solve the Internet access problem in remote and difficult-to-cover areas.

5. WiFi 6 is officially launched

The latest WiFi standard WiFi6 (802.11ax) will provide faster data transmission speeds. The latest wireless transmission rate can reach 9.6Gbps.

Wi-Fi 6 improves throughput through more efficient data encoding, so more data is packed onto the same radio waves, and the chips that encode and decode those signals are becoming more powerful to handle the extra work.

This new standard will even improve the speed of 2.4GHz networks. Although the industry has moved to 5GHz Wi-Fi to reduce interference, 2.4GHz is still better at penetrating solid objects.

6. WPA3 security protocol is released

After the WPA2 protocol was exposed for security vulnerabilities, the new generation of WPA3 wireless encryption protocol has become the best choice for improving Wi-Fi security. WPA3 has four significant upgrades, such as supporting "Wi-Fi Enhanced Open" technology to improve the connection security of public Wi-Fi, preventing brute force cracking, preventing the risk of leakage caused by traffic monitoring, and simplifying security configuration. Overall, WPA3 has strengthened wireless security performance on multiple levels.

7. AI and machine learning are integrated into network architecture

In order to welcome the arrival of 5G, operators need to work overtime to build 5G bearer networks. 4K video, VR, online games, etc. will make users consume more data in the 5G era. In addition, the explosion of the Internet of Things will increase the number of access devices by hundreds of times.

AI and machine learning are embedded in the 5G bearer network, without any hardware, in the form of pure software. There is no need to replace or embed hardware, as long as it is put into the bearer network and runs, real-time analysis can be performed. The combination of AI and machine learning can analyze the network through application behavior and make dynamic adjustments to the network in real time.

8. Wireless router speed up to 10G

At Computex 2018, ASUS released the GT-AX11000 wireless router, which has a total of 10G wireless transmission in three bands. The maximum wireless rate on the 2.4GHz band can reach 1148Mbps, and the maximum wireless rate on the two 5GHz bands can reach 4804Mbps. The transmission of wireless networks is faster than that of ordinary home wired LANs.

9. 5G spectrum is officially allocated

The 5G operating frequency bands announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology include 3300-3400 MHz, 3400-3600 MHz, and 4800-5000 MHz, and the fee reduction policy covers these three frequency bands. According to calculations, the fee reduction policy can save operators 2.25 billion yuan in capital expenditures each year. Coupled with the policy of "reduction and exemption in the first three years and gradual restoration in the next three years", it can save operators more than 20 billion yuan in expenditures in the first six years.

Conclusion

Behind all the speed increases should be equipment upgrades and business opportunities for replacement.