Broadband network infrastructure of the future: roles of network design tools in technology deployment strategies

The rapid pace of technology introduction in the network infrastructure and services offered on this infrastructure are creating new challenges for telecommunication product and network planners. In particular, a multitude of choices, the unpredictability of future technologies and traffic, the need to operate heterogeneous networks, and the speed of change create a need for a set of tools which allow quantitative evaluation of alternatives quickly in early phases of decision making while allowing the same tools to migrate to more elaborate deployment help during the later stages. We have begun an effort to create such a set of tools under the umbrella of integrated network design tools (INDT). In this article, we describe key challenges and approaches used in INDT to meet these challenges. We also discuss the algorithmic and software architecture of INDT, and illustrate its use via examples from transport infrastructure evolution. Finally, we describe the migration path of INDT to move from early decision help to later deployment support tools. Specific topics discussed include: plesiosynchronous digital hierarchy, SONET/SDH systems, ATM, network topologies, traffic types and routing