Integrated planning for Next Generation Networks

Service convergence, digitization of the content and packet based information transport, in addition to economies of scale, rapid and flexible service delivery, reduction of capital and operating costs, changes in telecom policy and regulation, and ever increasing competition have been key factors in the evolution of Next Generation Networks (NGN). Telecom service providers worldwide are migrating their legacy networks towards, or deploying new next generation networks to meet the market and competitive demands. The IP-centric converged next generation networks aim to provide a multitude of services over a single integrated network infrastructure, rather than multiple segmented and overlay networks as have existed before. It is also expected that the legacy network will co-exist with next generation networks in the foreseeable future. However, the deployment of next generation networks has brought its unique challenges for network managers and planners, as network has to be planned in a cost effective way without over or under building network resources. Moreover, as the next generation networks is a single converged network, the traffic load in one domain of the network has major impact in other domains and overall network as well. This paper addresses the challenges related to the planning of the next generation networks and a reference architecture enabling integrated end-to-end planning of next generation network covering multitude of domains and layers.