Network deployment examples

Enterprises depend on business processes to govern their operations. These span across the internal structures (organizations, departments) of the enterprise, involving the various assets, people, and operational systems (primarily IT – Information Technology, and OT – Operational Technology) of the enterprise.

The Enterprise Architecture (EA) consist of a Business Domain and a Technology Domain. Here we will focus on the Technology Domain.

A combined view of the Technology Domain in the EA and the Network Architecture is shown in Figure 16 below.

It describes the main interfaces between and EA and a Network Architecture and is a simplified version which leaves out some details for simplicity reasons.

Some of the main capabilities of these interfaces can be summarized shortly as:

• Networking, connectivity, and associated management
• Overall management functionality
• Consumption of connectivity services, e.g. from a CSP
• Using Communication Services, e.g. voice and video

3GPP based telecom networks are highly suitable as the base architecture to support the technical side of and Enterprise architecture for many different scenarios, enabling multiple use cases for several customer types.

Above Figure 17 describes three main market segments with industrial deployment scenarios stipulated. This should be viewed as a guide and variations will exist.

General public networks

These networks are provided by mobile operators and cater to both consumer and business needs. They encompass a wide range of services, including internet and data access, communication services, emergency services, and emerging technologies like XR and cloud gaming.

Wide-area dedicated networks

These networks offer coverage over general wide areas or specific geographical regions. While they provide similar services to general public networks, they are tailored to include enterprise solutions such as dedicated APNs and VPNs, public safety services, and mission critical communications, like those required in rail transportation.

Local dedicated networks

Designed for specific, localized environments, these networks serve industries such as mining, manufacturing, healthcare, and education. They facilitate connectivity and communication tailored to the unique demands of sites like hospitals, airports, stadiums, and university or enterprise campuses.

From a RAN perspective, such a local-area private network may be either realized by means of an infrastructure mapped over CSP resources or as a dedicated infrastructure with own resources. A Local dedicated network cannot support use cases requiring wide-area coverage.

A few examples of considerations to be made of functionality to be deployed across all three segments:

1. It is necessary to provide mechanisms for local and central network exposure. Deployment cases are different, but the exposed services are the same.
2. It will be central to support network slicing to allow partitioning of the network for use cases requiring differentiated characteristics.
3. NRAR is one example of several characteristics that must be supported to ensure, in this case reliability and resilience for all above segments.
4. When developing network functions a system wide context must be understood to support a flexible usage in a large set of deployments and solutions.

Below examples describe on a high level the different segments from above. Note that these are examples with the possibility of both diversity and mutations.

Included is a Legend (Table 2)to help the readability for the coming Enterprise illustrations.

In this deployment, Figure 18, the CSP owns the hardware and infrastructures of the General public network, while network API exposure function has shared ownership between CSP and Ericsson. The example shows a third party providing the cloud infrastructure in the CN sites while the RAN sites rely on purpose-built equipment.

The example depicts a third party delivering the data layer product, deployed in both CSP’s sites and Ericsson premises.

Ericsson provides the applications for Network API Exposure layer. The API aggregator/ marketplace application is owned by Ericsson and deployed in a public cloud provider’s data center.

The second example Figure 19 is a Wide-area dedicated (confined) network and typically deployed by/for private enterprise/government and implies it’s restricted to a limited set of users. 

Examples can be railroad, public safety networks, electricity grids, etc. In some markets these types of dedicated networks can be provided as dedicated slices in a General public network, though not depicted here.

This network requires additional characteristics such as high coverage and availability from Public Safety and latency for Rail as low as below 10ms (one-way e2e) with additional requirements of high throughput in both up- and downlink.

Slicing can be used for use-case separation and to ensure required characteristics. A distributed Core UP is an option supporting e.g. critical industries.

Several models are possible (already in use) for ownership of a wide-area confined network.

Exposure for the Wide-area dedicated networks is different compared to General Public networks with fewer users, but with high accessibility and security requirements, thus limited need for aggregation functionality.

Figure 19 shows an example of an internal (to the owner of the Wide-area dedicated network) API Marketplace provided for application developers which could be hosted either in a public or private cloud.

Local dedicated networks are typically deployed for a private enterprise and three cases are described above in Figure 20:

• Customer 1, where the equipment is owned and managed by the enterprise and only used within the enterprise premises with private local devices.

• Customer 2, where the equipment is owned and managed by the enterprise. The usage is both local within the enterprise and external to a CSP network. The devices in this case can be both private local devices as well as external devices with CSP connection.
• Customer 3, where the equipment is local to the enterprise but owned and managed by a CSP. The usage is both local within the enterprise and external to a CSP network. The devices in this case can be both private local devices as well as external devices with CSP connection.

The two last examples offer the additional possibility of providing, e.g. slices in the General public network for the enterprise application.

Important characteristics to the use cases in this segment are privacy, throughput and latency as low as <5ms. Mobile broadband is still required as is a communication service (voice) due to the mix of uses cases in e.g. manufacturing.

Several areas exist where service exposure will be necessary. The Service Exposure functionality/API Marketplace can be owned by an enterprise or access may be provided to a marketplace provided by the CSP.

Several ownership models for dedicated networks exist with two major distinctions: 1) CSP provides local dedicated network functionality to enterprises, or 2) enterprises own the infrastructure/network functionality.