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Creating Network
Automation Strategies

2 Applying closed-
loop automation
in broadband
networks

7 Advanced
Network
Automation for
Next-Generation
Optical Transport
Networks

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Reprinted with revisions to format from LIGHTWAVE. Copyright 2021 by Endeavor Business Media.
 Applying closed-loop
automation in
broadband networks
BY FILIP DE GREVE

With a continual increase in service level automation strategies to reduce human error
expectations, network automation is a vital and boost productivity.
step in the digital transformation of an
Software-defined networking (SDN) helps
operator’s business. Multi-generational, multi-
to create more self-aware, self-governing
technology networks have led to complex
networks that can apply artificial intelligence
operational processes with increased data
and machine learning (AI/ML) to automate
sources and volumes, heightening the need
operations, improve service assurance, and
for comprehensive data management and
provide detailed analysis for anomaly detection,

Figure 1. Closed-loop automation (CLA) with software-defined access networks.

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 action recommendation,
and capacity planning.

In this article, we’ll

look at how automation
improves network
performance through
smart service level
agreement (SLA)
management. We will
show how dynamic
network optimization
can deal with the
presence of heavy users
on a passive optical
Figure 2: Internet traffic forecasting in UK. Source: https://www.
network (PON) and increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/average-home-monthly-internet-usage-
restore the other users’ forecast
capability to use peak
The challenge of PON
capacity, without disturbing the download bandwidth management
performance of the heavy users. Sounds
According to data published by Openreach,
contradictory, but it’s possible.
internet traffic in the UK more than doubled
from 2019 to 2020 and some studies predict that
Software-defined it will exceed 1 TB/subscriber/month by 2025
access networks (Figure 2).
Central to software-defined access network
The challenge for communication service
(SDAN) architectures is the SDN controller,
providers (CSPs) in such a scenario is
which offers automation that can be adapted
that network capacity and corresponding
for a vast permutation of needs, services, and
infrastructure investments are planned over
processes. Analytical engines can use SDAN’s
many years while demand is booming and
open interfaces to retrieve real-time and
as we’ve just seen with COVID-enforced
historical data from central data lakes, while
lockdowns, can change almost overnight.
the closed-loop automation (CLA) framework
enables zero-touch provisioning, network health The notion of SLAs is also evolving, as
analysis, and automated troubleshooting. consumers are now as dependent on their
broadband connection as businesses are. “Best
The open APIs enable operators to build
effort” services are becoming less acceptable
their own automation apps on top of the SDN
to customers, or regulators. So, it’s getting
controller. As SDN controllers enable dynamic
increasingly difficult to dimension the network
determination of threshold crossing alerts and
(determine the maximum number of subscribers
KPI-based monitoring, the analytic engine can,
per PON) as well as to determine the network
in turn, trigger CLA routines for corrective
actions, thus automating the loop (Figure 1).

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 configuration parameters like the maximum rate
per subscriber (advertised peak rate).
Overbooking allows CSPs to advertise more
throughput by relying on the fact that not all
the subscribers will request the maximum
throughput at the same time. However, to ensure
acceptable service levels, overbooking has to be
carefully managed.
The sharing of a PON among multiple users
is typically handled by traffic schedulers
and shapers. In this sharing scheme and
without service differentiation, every active
user will receive an equal share of the total
bandwidth. The free bandwidth is automatically
redistributed among active users. In a worst-
case scenario when all subscribers are active,
the minimum bandwidth that each user will
receive is equal to the total bandwidth divided
by the number of subscribers. In the best case,
if there were only one active user, this user
would get the full bandwidth.
CSPs make sure that all subscribers can access
services, like video streaming, all at the same
time, and that significant extra bandwidth is
available on top to address best effort services
like web surfing. As user activities, at least
for the best-effort applications, are totally
uncorrelated, it is very unlikely that all of them
request a high throughput at the same time,
allowing significant overbooking with limited
impact on the service level.
One of the limitations of the PON, especially
when overbooking is introduced, is vulnerability
against heavy users. Long-term subscriber
fairness is hard to obtain, as at any time, the
bandwidth is fairly shared among the active
users, irrespective of historical bandwidth
utilization. This means PONs are vulnerable to
people using their subscription to the max: the
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Netflix 8K streamer, the dubious downloader,
the home-based 3D animator, or when using
a residential subscription for commercial
services. If a single user requests the maximum
bandwidth permanently, it can prevent other
subscribers from getting high bandwidth even
for a short period of time.
Historically, CSPs have used rules-of-thumb to
do traffic management. However, traditional
ways of managing heavy users (throttling, data
caps, or premium pricing for higher SLAs) are
not dynamic; once applied they are permanent
until unapplied, even when extra bandwidth is
available or no other subscribers are affected,
say during night-time or low traffic periods.
CSPs are caught between increasing advertised
peak rates while increasing the overbooking
levels or keeping them at a conservative level
to guarantee SLAs and limit the impact of
heavy users.
Applying online and offline
network optimization
Using CLA, we can implement dynamic
bandwidth management that preserves peak
rate availability even in the presence of heavy
users. It ensures all subscribers within a PON (or
a slice of a PON) have access to a “fair” portion
of available bandwidth.
SDN takes advantage of telemetry—network
data being streamed continuously rather than
being requested periodically—to understand
traffic patterns in real-time and compare
them with historical bandwidth consumption
measured at different levels in the network
(subscriber, PON, operator, etc.). This ability
enables bottlenecks to be identified and
autonomously remediated in near-real time,
which is impossible to do in traditional systems.
 Figure 3. Network design tool using machine learning.
Achieving this goal requires a modern and
efficient approach to network data capture
and telemetry streaming via protocols like
IPFIX and Kafka.
If insufficient capacity is detected, CLA
reduces the bandwidth for heavy users based
on their historical consumption by dynamically
adapting the traffic schedulers and shapers.
When more capacity becomes available, CLA
restores the initial configuration. This practice
guarantees long-term fairness for subscribers
while maximizing bandwidth utilization. To
illustrate the performance in a realistic scenario,
one heavy user can deny all other users to
complete a successful speed test; but when the
CLA is activated, we restore the probability of a
successful speed test to 80% for all users, while
the heavy user’s download times are increased
by less than 1%, which is hardly a performance
degradation.
While the bandwidth closed-loop optimization
operates online, telemetry can also be leveraged
in offline AI/ML tools that are able to learn
the traffic patterns from the network and
recommend optimal advertised peak rates and
the number of subscribers per PON for a desired
SLA (Figure 3).
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For example, an ML model can be trained to
determine the number of subscribers per PON
that corresponds to a minimum speed test
success probability and a given advertised
peak rate. Alternatively, an ML model can
also be trained to determine the peak rate
that corresponds to a certain speed test
success probability and a given number of
subscribers per PON.
The same overbooking/heavy user problem
exists when a single network is shared by
different virtual network operators. In the same
way, virtual operators or infrastructure providers
can use CLA and offline recommendation tools
to dynamically dimension both the physical
PON and the virtual slices according to real-time
usage and historical trends.
Conclusion
We expect SDN automation to make
important decisions for broadband operators
at an accelerating rate: unlocking new service
capabilities, bringing more agility to their
operations, making for smarter decisions, and
improving network performance.
Filip De Greve is product marketing
director, Fixed Networks, at Nokia.
How to evolve your
hardware-based
broadband network
to a software-defined
access network?
Discover how Nokia solutions can help.

nokia.com/networks/broadband-cloud
 Advanced Network
Automation for
Next-Generation Optical
Transport Networks
BY PARTHIBAN KANDAPPAN

With the introduction of 4G and 5G mobile

technology, the increasing number of networked
devices, and the exploding number of services
relying on connectivity, such as Internet of
Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), augmented
reality (AR), gaming, and any other cloud
offering, communications networking in
general and optical transport networking
in particular have become an increasingly
central infrastructure for a large part of the
global economy.

The optical networking industry is successfully

addressing this important role through speed of
innovation. Photonic and electronic integration
have enabled smaller, more power-efficient
optical transmission systems with higher
throughput. With a two-year cadence, the
capacity carried on a single wavelength within
a DWDM wavelength band has moved from
the already disruptive introduction of coherent
100G transmission per channel to 200G, 400G,
600G, and 800G wavelength capacities. The
wavelength spectrum that has traditionally
been used, the C-Band, has been widened
to encompass the L-Band as well to provide
mechanisms to further enhance reach and
spectral efficiency and optical layer connectivity.
To drive this fast innovation, network operators
increasingly combine best-in-class products
from different vendors into their networks.
All these innovations and capabilities have
improved the scale, capacity, and power
efficiency, but have also resulted in a significant
amount of complexity in managing the
impressive pool of bandwidth available across
vendor and technology domains. To leverage
this huge amount of scalability and flexibility
in networks today, developing suitable new
paradigms for control and network operation has
now become the focus for network operators and
the optical networking industry.

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 Combined with the rise of internet content
providers (ICPs), a planet-scale networking
infrastructure has been built in the last decade
to sustain social media and rich media content
exchange. With ICPs, we have seen significant
investments in data centers, which represent
Figure 1. Autonomous, self-driving optical networks. Source: https://www.osapublishing.org/abstract.
cfm?URI=OFC-2020-M1B.1
an amalgamation of compute, storage, and
networking infrastructure. This has also had
a transformational impact on traditional telco
carriers/service providers (CSPs). For CSPs, the
imminent arrival of 5G – which is expected
to act as a force multiplier for other innovative
technologies, including artificial intelligence
(AI), IoT, and edge computing – is going to
result in a new cycle of network capacity
growth and the associated capital investment
in infrastructure. Advanced automation is going
to play an important role to improve operational
costs and network availability.
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It is worthwhile to briefly discuss some common
methods used by network operators to achieve
automation today. The motivation is to automate
repeatable tasks that inherently do not require
any enhanced “intelligence.” That is, the
tasks are fairly contained, are well-defined,
and achieve very specific goals. The scope
of automation itself encompasses the overall
spectrum of FCAPS operations; automation
tasks could include performing custom
monitoring beyond the capabilities offered by
the network element, or a slightly more advanced
task could involve the movement of bandwidth
(wavelengths or circuits) based on time-of-day
considerations. Given the progressive evolution
of telecom systems over time, automation tasks
that are initially defined and maintained by
operators gradually become first-class features
that eventually are implemented natively by the
 networking equipment vendors as part of their
software offerings.
Building Next-Generation
Network Operations Centers
The changing operations paradigm from
classic telco networking towards a new IT
networking environment also affects the role
Components of Automation
The introduction of software-defined
networking (SDN) has pushed the networking
industry (optical included) towards open
and standardized interfaces, from routing to
photonic layers, allowing greater control and
visibility into the network. With well-defined
APIs from the NEs, the SDN controller can
manage the data, control and management
planes of the NE. As the lines between legacy
NMSs and an SDN controller blur, the “SDN
controller layer” is coalescing many other
network functions, hosting automation scripts
& tasks, archiving of performance monitoring
(PM) data, real-time planning, and in the
near future, AI/ML frameworks for cognitive,
predictive/proactive analytics. A few key
components that are necessary for automation
in the near term:
• Programmable Optical Hardware and
NEs: The ability to automate requires
fundamental capabilities in the optical data
plane to be able to enact those intents.
These capabilities span from colorless/
directionless/contentionless (CDC) ROADMs
and hybrid ODU/packet switches to highly
spectrally efficient coherent WDM interfaces
(that enable fine-grained tradeoff between
capacity and reach). These characteristics
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of a network operations center (NOC). Instead
of a central hub with operators in front of the
network management system (NMS) graphical
user interfaces, the general objective now is to
establish autonomous networks.
Autonomous networks are the eventual goal
beyond advanced automation (Figure 1). To
contrast autonomous networks from automated/
enable optical networks to be remotely
configured to changing traffic conditions.
For instance, automatic migration of a circuit
to a low-latency/high-priority path based on
time-of-day.
• Automated Network Equipment
Provisioning: Zero-touch provisioning
(ZTP) is the ability to commission optical
devices with very little human involvement.
Field personnel install equipment within the
NOC and only perform techanical and power
installation procedures.
• SDN Control, Programmability,
and APIs: SDN transport has brought
in extensive API frameworks based on
YANG data models known as model-driven
networking (MDN). MDN normalizes network
functions across vendor implementations
through data abstractions, which are
specified as YANG models. MDN results in
separation of intent (what) from actuation
(how), which is critical to scale operations in
multi-vendor environments.
• Streaming Telemetry: Modern devices
support streaming telemetry-based
performance monitoring, which resolves
the limitations of legacy SNMP pull-based
monitoring. The devices can stream
continued on page 10
 (push) data at varying frequencies (from
seconds to minutes), which allows improved
monitoring and observability. In lieu of AI/
ML applications where timely data is key
to improved prediction accuracy, telemetry
allows real-time tracking of key performance
metrics, which further enhances predictive/
proactive analytics.
• Analytics and Machine Learning
Frameworks: Popular public cloud
providers and other software vendors are
increasingly providing “AI/ML and analytics
as a service” offerings, allowing an easier
starting point than having to build software
stacks from scratch. These approaches
increasingly provide benefit to network
operations, e.g., through the analyses of
traffic flows and traffic prediction, optical
performance analytics and optimization,
automatic operations is akin to comparing a
Level 3+ capable “hands-off” self-driving car
to the automatic/semi-automatic cars that
are ubiquitous today. Autonomous networks
encompass several self-* properties viz. self-
bootstrapping, self-forming, self-managing, and
self-healing. These networks can potentially
run in a driverless auto-pilot mode with zero
human-to-machine interaction. Where current
NOCs include network engineers who have
vendor-specialized certifications, an autonomous
network pushes towards NOC-less operations.
This involves retasking network engineers from
existing responsibilities (i.e., deploy ⇔ provision
⇔ monitor ⇔ debug) to “DevOps” roles, where
they double as software developers (Dev),
developing automation systems for operational
(Ops) tasks. Changes in the operational tools’
landscape and the associated paradigms
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as well as identifying security breaches or
denial of service attacks.
Operators are also considering policy-driven
cognitive systems that are used to (re-)configure
the network to accommodate dynamicity,
helping automate daily tasks depending on
user-specified conditions. Such policy-based
engine can be integrated with or without AI/
ML capabilities, providing an optimal ecosystem
for automation. Integration with AI/ML
components provides the foundation for closed-
loop autonomous actions. One such example
was recently demonstrated by a North American
operator when a policy-based system was
able to dynamically reallocate/migrate optical
capacity to support Ethernet bandwidth-on-
demand services utilizing multiple best-in-class
open source tools for streaming, messaging,
data collection, and learning
imply that it is imperative to make operations
personnel an active part of this transformation
and equip them for this new environment.
Migrating to NOC-less network operations will
take time and requires an industry effort among
operators, software players, and equipment
vendors, as the ability to automate in multi-
vendor environments is a prerequisite. There
are different stages in this journey, starting
with automating existing tasks within current
NOCs. Alongside the creation of an open
environment, the obvious starting point is to
automate existing repetitive tasks performed by
technicians in the NOC. For instance, ICPs are
gradually transforming network management
and operations by minimizing direct human
interaction and thereby reducing errors and
misconfigurations. They are moving to NOC-less
 operations, which are managed by robots. The
network engineers build robots, which in turn
manage the network. (For more on automation,
see “Components of Automation” below.)
Other new and exciting technologies will further
enhance this picture, in particular, artificial
intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML),
which are expected to play an important role in
moving toward a NOC-less network.
The ability to learn from existing information
and predict future capacity, throughput, faults,
or other events will turn into an important
operations tool. ML algorithms are probabilistic
rather than deterministic and rely purely on
data for accurate predictions. ML approaches
are cost-effective in comparison to conventional
approaches such as heuristics or analytical in
cases where the problem that is being solved
either suffers from model deficit or algorithm
deficit. ML is a powerful data-driven “tool” to
improve/extend existing solutions – automation
is still the “solution” that operators will deploy,
with AI/ML as technologies to achieve this goal.
We briefly highlight three optical networking
use cases where ML techniques have potential
to make an impact:
– F
 ailure Prediction and Preventive
Maintenance: Detection of anomalous
network parameters that could cause network
failures, identify root cause, and prescribe
preventive actions.
– C
 ognitive Service Provisioning: Using
historical data, an SDN-controlled autonomous
network can predict traffic volume/growth
and dynamically (re-)allocate resources
(spectrum, wavelengths, circuits, etc.).
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– Q
 uality of Transmission (QoT)
Estimation: Use ML to overcome model
deficits of existing heuristic approaches
and improve accuracy. The optical
lightpath performance can be estimated
by learning the characteristics from optical
devices, especially in open disaggregated
optical networks.
A NOC operator today uses vendor-specific
NMSs to provision connectivity services,
monitor alarms and performance data, and
manually trigger actions to fix issues. With the
prediction capabilities, operational practices
will change substantially: The cognitive
network will be expected to proactively predict
impending issues, take preventive action
whenever possible, and trigger steps to deal
with those issues. Using AI/ML methodologies
will enable operators to cover a much wider set
of topics for a more versatile reaction to events.
Once there are no repetitive tasks that need to
be done from a central location, we move closer
to achieving NOC-less operations, allowing
operators to concentrate on optimizing their
automated environments.
Operator and Vendor
Collaboration
Finally, while the promise of automation is
apparent, there are several challenges in
migrating to next-generation autonomous optical
networks that involve all the players in the
automation ecosystem.
The need for standardized tools/APIs is
crucial for multi-vendor integration. Progress
in standardization activities (IETF, ONF, OIF,
MEF, TIP) is slow, with parallel efforts trying
to achieve the same outcomes due to siloed
development. For operators, expanding the skills
 of the operational workforce is necessary, but
involves financial/business investments and a
change towards a mindset supporting a DevOps
model (executives to network engineers).
Further, onboarding AI/ML-based solutions
poses further challenges. As the accuracy of
learning-based systems is fully dependent upon
the quality of data, organizational and business
boundaries within operator organizations
make it challenging to collect, sanitize, and
share collected data, which results in disparate
pools of data.
Meanwhile, equipment vendors face their
own set of challenges. The primary challenge
is to facilitate operator interactions and data
sharing by operators – which is difficult for
privacy, business, and in some cases intellectual
property reasons. Vendors need to learn from
operators how their networking gear behaves in
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the field to improve performance and reliability.
Operators should be encouraged to share their
operational experiences with vendors to, in
turn, enable vendors to build use-case-driven,
high-value automation solutions for operators.
Recently in the context of ML, several key
software and hardware industry players have
joined forces to establish the Open Neural
Network Exchange, which strives to define
common data formats and open source building
blocks for ML and deep learning models. A
similar initiative is required in the networking
community that can bring the key players
together to build reusable automation and AI/
ML frameworks.
Parthiban Kandappan is chief
technology officer at Infinera.
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Minimizing runtime trouble in broadband network automation

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