INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
THIS WILL ENTAIL
A WIDE-SCALE
INCREASE IN FIBRE
OPTIC CABLING.
The locations at which micro data
centres will have to be deployed could be
demanding. To minimise risks, application
sites will have to be chosen carefully and
edge solutions will have to be as robust and
maintenance-free as possible.
Shibu Vahid, Head of Technical Operations,
R&M Middle East, Turkey and Africa
environment, with antennas, sensors and
other vehicles would effectively have to take
place at the speed of light.
Along with future 5G services, this will require
a fibre optic network along the roadside.
There would have to be servers or micro-data
centres on the roads or at base stations
every 15 kilometres to guarantee virtually
latency-free interaction and processing of
the most important data on site.
Exchanging data using remote cloud data
centres would be too slow to control traffic
and ensure there are no accidents with the
typical one to two milliseconds latency. So,
while the cloud could compile, analyse and
store all traffic data that is not critically
time-bound, the edge will require micro-data
centres as there is zero tolerance for latency
and a need for unconditional availability.
This latency, hyper-interactivity and
decentral intelligence will play a role
in numerous other applications in the
digitalised world. These include industrial
manufacture, industrial Ethernet and
robotics, 5G and video communication,
smart grids, the Internet of Things as well
as Blockchain, AI and AR applications. Edge
computing can support all these tasks by
shortening the path between the acquisition,
collection, analysis and feedback of
intelligence to the networks.
www.intelligentcio.com
They should also be able to run
independently without specialist personnel.
But there will still have to be safe rooms or
containers to protect micro data centres
from manipulation, environmental influences
and electromagnetic loads.
Installation and operation at the edge
will have to be made as simple as possible
with the plug and play principle applied to
connectivity and IT.
Micro-data centres will require the ability
to be connected directly to fibre optic or
broadband networks everywhere, and will
require integrated cooling, sound insulation,
UPS, access control, and remote monitoring.
Given the likely locations for their
deployment, they would have to be climate-
resistant, closed and shielded and designed
for maximum density and compactness.
The edge trend is leading to a paradigm shift
in the way we design, provide and monitor
networks as specific security, connectivity
and bandwidth requirements will have to be
taken into consideration.
Infrastructures will have to be designed with
the ability to spread computing power on
a wide scale and support software defined
WAN. This means that service providers will
have to adapt their business models.
The base stations of cellular phone network
providers will be particularly suitable as
sites for edge data centres. Because with
the introduction of 5G technology, mobile
communication antennas will become
locks for enormous amounts of data.
Hubs or gateway exchanges of cable and
telecommunication networks are also
a possibility.
The exponential growth of data from the
various applications and devices which can
be found everywhere is forcing us to rethink
today’s network structures.
Weak subnetworks can slow down the
entire communication chain. Bottlenecks
in network interfaces, transmission and
computing capacities are to be avoided at all
levels to be able to guarantee a smooth flow
of data traffic.
Decentralised mini or micro-data centres
can reliably connect IoT devices on short
links and can easily be scaled when local
IoT networks grow, thus serving as the
backbone for Smart City infrastructure.
They can replicate cloud service and
business-critical processes on site and
buffer bandwidth-intensive applications
such as mobile HD video.
And, if cloud connections falter or fail
altogether, the networks, servers, and
devices at the edge will continue to work.
Edge data centres can even form geo-
redundant groups if they are sufficiently
networked and thus promote the
security and availability of services in
extreme conditions.
By decentralising and preparing for this
paradigm shift in networking and data
centre deployment, service providers can
build the infrastructures upon which the host
of next-generation services for the Smart
City can be realised. n
ALONG WITH
FUTURE 5G
SERVICES, THIS
WILL REQUIRE
A FIBRE OPTIC
NETWORK ALONG
THE ROADSIDE.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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