The Key To Delivering a High-Availability Service Your Subscribers Can Trust
What is the most critical factor for subscribers regarding their broadband service? It’s no longer just speed or price, but service reliability. Subscriber priorities are evolving, and today, broadband is an essential service—as crucial as electricity or water. Without it, many people would be unable to perform their jobs, continue their education, or access essential services.
That’s why ensuring the network’s reliability is key to success as a broadband service provider (BSP).
How To Design a Highly Available Network
Network engineers face two fundamental challenges: designing a network that minimizes the impact of equipment failures and, if things do go wrong, getting back up and running as quickly as possible. So, what’s the best strategy for designing a resilient, always-available network?
It starts with redundancy, including diversely routed fiber networks in the aggregation and access domains. At the network layer, high availability is achieved at multiple levels. You can add link aggregation group (LAG) protection, add G.8032 ring protection, and leverage IP networking protocols (such as BGP, ECMP network routing strategy, and Layer 3 MPLS with VPNs) to deliver varying granularity of network resiliency and service availability. From a system perspective, look for a modular redundant architecture that provides hardware redundancy with in-service software update (ISSU) capabilities. These capabilities not only protect service traffic from fiber cuts and hardware failures but also allow BSPs to reduce network downtime and the maintenance window duration during network upgrades.
Simplifying the broadband access network by consolidating and moving service-enabling network functions (like service routing and subscriber management) closer to the subscriber reduces the number of systems and router ports to purchase, configure, manage, and operate—resulting in fewer points of failure.
This is made possible by the Calix Intelligent Access solution on the Calix Broadband Platform, which allows networks to be designed with built-in broadband assurance capabilities. Examples of recent enhancements include:
- Next-generation geo-redundancy. The Intelligent Access network allows BSPs to run two active connections in geographically separate locations. This means that, if one location goes offline due to a node failure, hardware failure, or a fiber cut, the network seamlessly switches to the other location. This first-of-its-kind offering in the industry acts as a unique safety net when disaster strikes.
- Automated network upgrades. Upgrading the network—or even routine maintenance—can be a major cause of network failure and disruption. Calix now offers dual-line cards that allow BSPs to perform upgrades while protecting the network from going down. Our E-9 access service management (ASM) aggregation platform also supports in-service upgrades on high-capacity nodes that can’t afford to be taken offline.
As a network engineer, having a resilient network not only allows you to sleep better but also establishes the foundation for launching new services that rely on reliability and high availability in the access network. This encompasses diversification into new segments beyond residential, such as small business (via SmartBiz™) and community service (SmartTown™).
The need for a reliable broadband connection has never been more critical, so make sure resiliency is at the heart of your network strategy.
Related Articles
