A Network Architect's Guide to 5G

THE NETWORK PROFESSIONAL’S GUIDE TO PLANNING, DESIGNING, AND DEPLOYING 5G TRANSPORT NETWORKS

As  5G transforms mobile usage and services, network professionals will  need to significantly evolve their transport network architectures  towards greater sophistication and stronger integration with radio  networks, and facilitate transition towards cloud-native 5G mobile core.  Until now, however, most 5G guides have foregrounded RF/radio and  mobile core innovations, not its implications for data networks. A Network Architect’s Guide to 5G fills the gap, giving network architects, designers, and engineers  essential knowledge for designing and planning their own 5G networks.

Drawing  on decades of experience with global service providers and enterprise  networks, the authors illuminate new and evolving network technologies  necessary for building 5G-capable networks, such as segment routing,  network slicing, timing and synchronization, edge computing, distributed  data centers, integration with public cloud, and more. They explain how  5G blurs boundaries between mobile core, radio access, and transport,  as well as the changes in the composition of a traditional cell site  with the adoption of Open and Virtualized RAN resulting in a transition  to mobile xHaul. Every chapter builds on earlier coverage, culminating  in a “big picture” presentation of a complete 5G network design.

• Understand the evolution of mobile technologies over the generation leading to 5G’s foundational concepts and principles.
• Explore  5G changes to Radio Access Networks (RAN), the Mobile Core, Mobile  Transport, and the need for tighter integration between them.
• Use Segment Routing to architect simplified, SDN-capable networks, and enable network slicing for 5G.
• Rethink  transport design to incorporate Far-Edge, Edge, and public-cloud based  data centers augmenting centralized DCs to support distributed peering  and Multi-access Edge Compute.
• Provide  guidance to meet the criteria and requirements for various aspects of  Fronthaul, Midhaul, and Backhaul architecture, such as transport  protocol evaluation, latency consideration, routing design, QoS  modeling, network device selection, and more.
• Forge a cohesive 5G network architecture by combining mobile communications principles with advanced transport technologies.