When you take a look at the growth of Internet traffic being generated in the next five years, it is truly astounding. Both Cisco (News - Alert) and Nokia have forecasted a growth of hundreds of exabytes (EB) per month by 2021 and 2022 respectively. While Cisco says it will be 278 EB per month in 2021, Nokia (News - Alert) puts the number at 330 EB per month in 2022. Whichever data point you choose, it is hundreds of millions of terabytes networks and datacenters will have to learn to manage. Nokia's answer is the new FP4 chip, which is capable of moving 2.4 terabits per second. It is being used to power the 7750 Service Router (SR)-s and Nokia 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS)-XC to deliver increased visibility and next generation communications services.
The single-shelf Nokia 7750 SR-14s can handle up to 144 Tbps, and 7950 XRS-XC goes over half a petabit at 576 terabits per second. These numbers are for single systems through chassis extension without requiring separate switching shelves.
With this much traffic, being able to weed out bad actors is going to become increasingly more difficult. Nokia is looking for its FP4 chip and routers to do the heavy lifting along with the technology it integrated with the acquisition of Deepfield IP network analytics system. Together, Nokia says DDoS attacks can be spotted and stateless packet inspection performed to gain more insight into network traffic and any potential problems.
The issue of security in a world of 278 to 330 EB of traffic per month is a daunting one. In an interview with Venturebeat's Khari Johnson, Nokia IP and Opticals CTO Steve Vogelsang said, “What we were able to do with the new silicon is instrument silicon so we can do the vast majority of DDOS protection in the network so every router in the network suddenly becomes a DDOS mitigation device, and that’s really been huge when we talk to customers. About 90 percent of the traffic, which is really what causes the big problem the volumetric traffic, we can basically block in the network itself.”
The Deepfield IP network analytics platform and software-defined networking (SDN) will also deliver granular visibility and control, not only to address security issues, but to maximize efficiency in networks by routing traffic more intelligently. This will allow service providers to deliver next generation communications without latency and lag, whether it is 8K video or immersive VR tours in real-time.
Edited by Alicia Young