The current era holds great promise for network evolution and transformation, as researchers and industry experts work diligently to push the boundaries of what is possible in networking technology.
One of the key areas of focus today is the pursuit of higher network performance. With the increasing demand for data-intensive applications, such as streaming services, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, there is a need for networks to deliver faster speeds, lower latency, and greater bandwidth. Researchers are exploring technologies like next-generation wireless, such as Wi-Fi 7 and 6G, which promise to provide significantly improved data rates, enhanced device density, and ultra-low latency.
These advancements will enable users to enjoy seamless connectivity and support emerging technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality. Certainly!
Here’s a more detailed explanation of the networking technologies mentioned:
Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
SDN is an approach that separates the control plane and data plane in a network architecture. The control plane manages the network’s behavior, while the data plane handles the forwarding of network traffic. By centralizing the control plane’s management and programmability, SDN offers several benefits:
- Flexibility SDN allows administrators to dynamically configure and manage network resources through a centralized controller, making it easier to adapt to changing network requirements.
- Scalability With SDN, network resources can be scaled up or down more efficiently as the control is decoupled from the physical infrastructure.
- Network Configuration SDN simplifies network configuration and reduces manual intervention. Administrators can define network policies and rules in a central controller, which then pushes these configurations to the relevant network devices.
Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
NFV involves virtualizing network functions that traditionally run on dedicated hardware devices, such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers. By running network functions as software on commodity hardware, NFV offers the following advantages:
- Agility NFV allows network functions to be deployed and scaled rapidly, as they are no longer tied to specific hardware devices. Virtualized network functions can be provisioned on-demand, reducing deployment time and enabling more agile network management.
- Scalability Virtualized network functions can be scaled horizontally by spinning up additional instances to handle increased network demands, providing greater scalability and flexibility.
- Cost Efficiency NFV reduces the need for expensive proprietary hardware, as network functions can be virtualized on standard servers or in the cloud. This can lead to cost savings in terms of hardware acquisition, maintenance, and power consumption.
Digital Immune System
The Digital Immune System combines various practices and technologies to make critical applications more resilient to bugs. Thereby making it easier for them to recover, sustain their services, manage risks, and maintain business continuity. According to Gartner, businesses that invest in digital immunity will increase customer satisfaction by decreasing downtime by 80%.
The fundamental concepts of digital immunity include Observability, AI-augmented testing, Chaos engineering, auto-remediation, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Software supply chain security. These combine to ensure systems don’t crash, provide uninterrupted services, and issues get corrected fast. This helps to return the system to its default state for a superior UX.
Intent-Based Networking (IBN)
IBN is an emerging networking paradigm that aims to simplify network management and automate network configuration based on high-level business policies and goals. It involves the following key principles:
- Intent Administrators define their network’s desired behavior in terms of high-level intents or business objectives, rather than configuring individual devices manually.
- Automation IBN leverages automation to translate the specified intent into specific network configurations. Network devices and controllers work together to ensure that the network’s behavior aligns with the desired intent.
- Assurance IBN continuously monitors and validates network behavior to ensure it remains aligned with the defined intent. If any deviation occurs, the system can automatically make adjustments to bring the network back in line.
- Adaptation IBN enables dynamic network adaptation by automatically adjusting network configurations to respond to changing business needs or network conditions.
IBN simplifies network management by abstracting the complexity of underlying devices and protocols, making it easier to configure, operate, and troubleshoot networks. It enhances network security, improves network reliability, and helps organizations align their network operations with their business goals.
Applied Observability
Applied Observability is a practice that involves monitoring the internal state of complex distributed systems by gathering and analyzing telemetry data such as logs, metrics, traces, and dependencies. It provides complete and contextual information about system events, enabling faster problem detection and resolution. Applied Observability leverages AI, machine learning, and automation capabilities to identify and resolve issues without manual intervention, ensuring efficient system performance and superior user experience.
Applied Observability is the ability to penetrate deep into modern distributed systems for faster and automated issue detection and resolution. Through applied observability, you monitor the internal state of a complex system by gathering, comparing, and examining a steady stream of data and catching issues to remedy them at the earliest.
Leverage observability to screen and troubleshoot applications. Observability gathers telemetry data such as logs, metrics, traces, & dependencies. Then, it correlates them in real-time to provide resources with complete and contextual information about the events they need to address. You could even use AIOps, ML, and automation capabilities to resolve issues without manual intervention.
Cilium: Open-Source Networking and Security controls for containers
Cilium is emerging as a leading network technology. There are a few unique advantages of using Cilium: no code changes required for granular visibility, no need to learn a new language, and blazing fast performance.
Under the hood, Cilium uses a powerful open-source technology called eBPF, which effectively makes the Linux kernel programmable. Think of it as an innovation similar to JavaScript, which made web browsers programmable and made it possible to do things like dynamically update web pages, load user comments, and send notifications in real time.
Cilium is an open-source networking technology that provides granular visibility, security controls, and observability for containerized environments. It utilizes eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter), a powerful technology that makes the Linux kernel programmable. Cilium solves networking and observability challenges in Kubernetes and containerized environments, improving networking efficiency, performance, and security. eBPF makes it possible to run code securely inside the kernel without making any kernel-level code changes. This technology solves Kubernetes-related networking and observability challenges for enterprises of all sizes, but especially when they hit scale.
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) focuses on securing data at the layer level to rapidly identify and protect against risks. DSPM automates data detection, monitoring, and protection operations, allowing organizations to discover sensitive data, monitor its usage, and enforce security policies. DSPM solutions provide real-time visibility into data access, protection, and compliance, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring regulatory compliance.
After years spent securing the network, endpoints, and devices, enterprises are now focusing on data security to ensure that data layer-level risks, particularly the vast amounts of unstructured data contained in the cloud, are rapidly identified and secured.
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), by automating data detection and protection operations, will help adopters better discover, monitor, and protect their sensitive data, giving them highly accurate results without the need for large security teams. DSPM also monitors data for risk, including inappropriate permissions and incorrect entitlements. It remediates these issues in a timely fashion and prevents data loss.
Industry Cloud Platforms
Industry Cloud Platforms are specialized cloud platforms that offer tailored solutions for specific industry segments, addressing their unique requirements and challenges. These platforms provide industry-specific applications, services, and infrastructure that support critical business initiatives. Industry Cloud Platforms enhance adaptability, agility, and efficiency by offering pre-configured solutions and best practices specific to each industry, helping organizations accelerate digital transformation and innovation.
Using Industry cloud platforms, companies can create more agility in how they manage their workloads. They can also accelerate changes in business processes, data interrogation, and compliance procedures. They combine platform, software, and Infrastructure as a service to fine-tune adaptability, accelerate time to value, and capture the needs of vertical industry segments.
Platform Engineering
Platform Engineering is an approach that focuses on automating software delivery and collaboration processes to speed up application development, deployment, and management. It involves creating a self-service platform that provides developers with the necessary tools, frameworks, and infrastructure to build, test, and deploy applications rapidly. Platform Engineering enables organizations to achieve faster time-to-market, improve developer productivity, ensure consistency, and foster collaboration across teams.
Platform engineering improves the developer experience and increases productivity through automation and self-service capabilities to speed up the delivery of apps and facilitate better collaboration between operators and software developers. It intends to modernize enterprise software delivery through reusable tools and capabilities.
Getting the software out at the earliest requires a frictionless development cycle with minimal overhead, self-service features, reduced cognitive load, more consistency, higher efficiency, and seamless collaboration. Ideally, platform engineering looks to rework and build a platform in sync with the needs of its end users using standardized components and automated processes.
Wireless-Value Realization
The next-gen wireless will not only improve connectivity but also help optimize processes for higher reliability, lower costs, fewer risks, and increased productivity. Different wireless technologies will work cohesively on a single infrastructure and utilize capabilities to facilitate the shift toward digital transformation more seamlessly.
A more cost-efficient, unified, secure, reliable, and scalable technical core of the future wireless will help to reduce capital investment. The ongoing Internet of Things (IoT) wave will be able to better leverage the new wireless to pull data from the environment. Expect to witness applications in location tracking, energy harvesting, radar sensing, satellite tech, and other areas.
Next-Generation Hotspot (NGH)
Also known as Hotspot 2.0, NGH allows seamless and secure roaming across different wireless networks. NGH leverages the capabilities of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G to enhance user experience and network offloading. With NGH, users can seamlessly connect and switch between Wi-Fi networks, cellular networks, and other wireless technologies without interruption. NGH also improves security by providing secure authentication and encryption mechanisms during network transitions.
Hotspot 2.0 makes it easier to connect to wireless networks, eliminating the need to manually enter login credentials or configure device settings. Hotspot 2.0 technology could also replace current Wi-Fi roaming technologies, such as the WISPr protocol, which are less secure and don’t support automatic network discovery and authentication. This will lead to a better user experience and increased adoption of wireless services. Hotspot 2.0 also benefits cellular carriers, allowing them to offload data traffic from 4G and 5G services onto Wi-Fi networks. This can help reduce congestion on the cellular network and improve the overall user experience.
AI-Based Conversational Interfaces/Virtual Assistants for Network Teams
AI-based conversational interfaces and virtual assistants are tools that assist network teams in problem detection, resolution, and network management. These interfaces leverage AI and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to understand and respond to network-related queries and commands. They provide network administrators with real-time insights, automated troubleshooting, and actionable recommendations, improving efficiency, effectiveness, and collaboration within network teams.
Conversational interfaces and virtual assistants are rapidly becoming crucial tools, helping users find the root causes of network issues quickly and easily. Trial and error will be almost eliminated from the IT team’s vocabulary. Issues that used to take days to resolve, such as a bad cable, a missing VLAN, or a poor LTE signal, can be found in seconds with conversational interfaces, virtual assistants, and AI-based technologies.
6G: Satisfies the Needs of High-Bandwidth Applications
Even as 5G cellular technology continues to play a major role in broadband expansion, next-generation 6G wireless is being developed. The new technology offers speeds up to 100 times faster than its predecessor, making it highly suitable for bandwidth-hungry applications such as streaming high-definition video and gaming.
6G is the next generation of wireless technology, expected to succeed 5G in the coming years. While 5G provides significant improvements over its predecessors, 6G aims to push the boundaries even further. It promises ultra-high-speed wireless connections, low latency, massive device connectivity, advanced artificial intelligence integration, holographic communication, and enhanced support for emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and the Internet of Things (IoT).
AI TriSM
AI TriSM stands for AI Trust Risk & Security Management. It ensures that AI technology does what it is intended to do in a trustworthy, fair, reliable, effective, and secure manner. Additionally, it helps to protect the exchanged data, manage governance, safeguard privacy, and detect anomalies to protect the critical functions of your enterprise.
AI TriSM is an approach that focuses on managing risks and ensuring the trustworthy and secure deployment of AI technologies. It involves implementing robust AI governance frameworks, adopting ethical AI practices, and integrating AI with existing security and risk management processes. AI TriSM ensures that AI technologies are used responsibly, transparently, and with proper safeguards to protect critical enterprise functions, customer privacy, and data integrity.
The AI model should be trusted to exist, interact, and perform as designed. Any deviation could have drastic consequences – especially in Enterprises running multiple processes, managing numerous users, handling steady transactions, and having a heterogeneous data spread. AI TriSM consists of solutions and techniques to manage risks, send alerts, and act.
Unified SASE: Addresses Hybrid Workforce and Hybrid Clouds
Unified Secure Access Service Edge tightly integrates security and networking into a single platform. The technology uses a single-pass scanning architecture combined with a unified policy that’s configured via a unified console that draws from a unified data lake. This is significant for organizations to continue to provide a consistent and assured user experience while protecting users, devices, sites, and data amid the rapidly evolving dynamics.
Many enterprises still require employees to work in the office at least some of the time. This creates a hybrid and migratory workforce that will be transient across the enterprise perimeter, essentially dissolving the enterprise perimeter. Unified SASE addresses this concern by offering both network and cloud-centric security anywhere and anytime, to any user, device, or location consistently.
Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is an architectural framework that integrates security and networking into a single platform. SASE provides consistent and secure access to applications and resources for hybrid workforces and hybrid cloud environments. It combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) capabilities with security features like secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (CASB), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS). Unified SASE simplifies network management, enhances security, and improves user experience.
Unified SASE also addresses the management and security challenges presented by hybrid clouds. Most enterprises entered 2022 with a strategy to migrate workloads and applications to one cloud. Unified SASE, helps organizations deliver always-on, high-performance connectivity and application access across multiple clouds.
Network Automation
Network automation involves using software and tools to automate network management tasks, such as configuration, provisioning, and monitoring. It improves operational efficiency, reduces human error, and enables faster network deployment.
Zero Trust Network Security
Zero Trust is a security model that assumes no implicit trust within a network. It requires verification and authentication for every access attempt, regardless of location, and enforces strict access controls to protect against unauthorized access and lateral movement.
In the end, these are just some of the top networking technologies, showcasing the ongoing advancements and innovations in the field. As technology continues to evolve, networking solutions will continue to play a crucial role in enabling digital transformation, improving connectivity, and driving business success.
