2021.11.02 – Here’s why dynamic session steering could change the game for operators

Here’s why dynamic session steering could change the game for operators

Fierce Telecom – 2021.11.02

Broadband Forum offered a tantalizing glimpse of what the networks of the future might look like, demonstrating a technology called dynamic session steering which uses software-defined networking (SDN) to reconfigure a user’s connection on the fly based on the application they’re using.

The exhibition was the latest breakthrough in Broadband Forum’s work on its Cloud Central Office (CloudCO) project. Launched in 2016, CloudCO reimagines traditional central office hosting infrastructure by shifting to an SDN-based model which incorporates cloud capabilities and virtualization to make network functions more agile. By standardizing the interfaces between different elements, CloudCO also aims to enable interoperable multi-vendor deployments.

Tim Carey, lead technology strategist at Nokia and chair of Broadband Forum’s Open Broadband-Broadband Access Abstraction project, told Fierce specifications for most of the major CloudCO components have already been published. However, he noted the group is still working on the disaggregation of certain functions in the access network.

While Broadband Forum has hosted CloudCO demonstrations for several years, Carey said this time around it wanted to showcase something new. Cue dynamic session steering (which is also known as subscriber session steering).

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