- Google Fiber and Nokia demo’d network slicing for home broadband
- Automation and productization are challenges for deploying slices
- Use cases range from streaming and gaming to even financial transactions
When you think of network slicing, standalone 5G (5G SA) is probably the first use case that comes to mind. But the technology also has a place in the home broadband network, per a demo from Google Fiber and Nokia.
What Google Fiber did was place two gaming consoles next to each other and simulate network congestion, which drove the game’s latency up to 90 milliseconds. Unsurprisingly, “it was stalling, pixelating…a really ill experience for the end user,” said Nick Saporito, Google Fiber’s head of product.
The operator then carved out an end-to-end slice from the router back to the core network, decreasing latency all the way down to 10 milliseconds. Nokia’s Altiplano Access Controller – its automation software for fixed networks – “was really the instrumental piece of creating the network slice,” Saporito told Fierce.
It’s not the first time the companies have collaborated, as Google Fiber last year used Nokia’s fiber access platform to trial 50 Gbps PON over its live network. Nokia is also working with the United Arab Emirates operator du to test various slicing use cases, from gaming and video streaming to massive machine-type communications for industrial devices.
When considering how to implement network slicing on a wider scale, Saporito noted two key challenges. First, “a lot” of network automation is required to ensure a seamless experience. Google Fiber currently has a “mini-app” that lives on the router to help on the automation front, so that a technician doesn’t have to log onto the router and manually configure the settings.
The second challenge is figuring out how to effectively sell network slicing capabilities to customers.
Given how prevalent multi-gig internet has become, Google Fiber is thinking about whether it makes sense to give customers more “ISP-like controls over their pipe,” Saporito said, rather than just providing a one-size-fits-all product.
“Much like you can put your car in sport or comfort mode, maybe our customers could go to the GFiber app and put their internet in gaming mode, for example, and then all their gaming traffic is special handled by network slicing,” he explained. “Those are ways that we’re kind of thinking about how we would productize it.”
But widespread adoption of broadband network slicing is still a ways away, according to Dell’Oro Group VP Jeff Heynen, as most ISPs and equipment providers are still in the proof-of-concept phase.
“That being said, if you look down the road and you don’t expect downstream bandwidth consumption to grow as quickly as it historically has, then network slicing could be a way to help ISPs charge more for their service or, less likely, charge for specific slices,” he said.
Could network slicing offer more security?
Aside from improving gaming or AI applications, one interesting use case for slicing is to provide additional security around financial transactions, Heynen noted. An operator could create a slice on a “per-transaction basis,” complementing a more standard encryption method like SSL.
“You could imagine an ISP differentiating themselves from their competition by highlighting that they have the most secure broadband network, for example,” he added.
Saporito similarly noted the value of a so-called “transactional slice.” Though Google Fiber has yet to demo the concept, the idea is to create a temporary slice that would work when a customer logs onto their bank account.
“We could create an automatic slice in the background to where that banking traffic is going directly to the financial institution’s back-end, versus traversing the transport network,” he said. “The customer wouldn’t even really notice it.”