For the last decade, commercial and federal technical specialists have been talking about the power and flexibility of virtualization in servers. Today’s discussion brings us up to date with the impact of similar changes in the world of federal networks.
Today’s federal networks must manage a drastic increase in volume, inconsistent data flows, maintenance changes, as well as managing costs.
Jim Westorp from Ciena Government Services puts the increase in volume in simple terms. During the discussion, he mentions that the edge of the network is now one hundred times the size it used to be. We all know that a data center has seen similar increases, but in a data center, the volume can be managed easily because it is consistent. The drastic increase in data-generating at the edge does not come in easy-to-digest packages. There may be peaks and valleys that challenge any system.
When systems engineers draw a network on a whiteboard, they would put boxes that represent physical items like switches and routers. In this discrete-hardware world, each piece must be maintained separately. With the advent of Software-Defines Wide Area Networks (SD-WANS), these hardware pieces can be virtualized which makes it much easier to maintain and patch.
We all live in a legacy world. In networking, the terminology that is used to describe the dominant method of data transmission is Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). Millions of dollars have been spent to establish this current standard. In a virtual world of edge networking, the emphasis is on data packets, not dividing up the network in terms of time.
As a result, to take advantage of savings SD-WANs can provide, one needs a way to merge TDM and Ethernet to carry the data. Correct network architecture can allow the federal government to use existing infrastructure as well as more modern, flexible approaches. The idea here is to use the capability of SD-WANs to intelligently choose a particular path on a dynamic basis. This gives federal leaders the lowest cost and highest capacity network connection.
To view this webinar: Network Modernization at the Edge.
Featured Speakers:
COL Joseph Pishock
Director, Global Networks & Services, U.S. Special Operations Command J63
Jim Westdorp
Chief Technologist, Ciena Government Solutions Inc.
Colin Gosnell
Director of Engineering, Comcast Government Services, LLC
John Breeden (moderator)
Contributing Editor,
FedInsider
