Two main forces are driving the explosion of mobile-network traffic. First, there’s the steady flow of technological changes in these networks, coupled with ever-evolving bandwidth speeds. Specifically, rates have grown from the early 1.8-, 3.6-, and 7.2-Mbit/s High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), to 21-Mbit/s HSPA+ and higher, to the soon-to-arrive 100-Mbit/s Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Second, bandwidth demands continue to soar due to the proliferation of wireless smart phones and devices and Internet video.

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However, the average revenue per user (ARPU) remains flat or sees only incremental growth. More importantly, ARPU will maintain that pace well into the future. Thus, a solution is desperately needed to bridge the chasm today—and one that can evolve into the future.

Bottleneck Challenges

Demands for more bandwidth aren’t the only concern for engineers. There’s also the issue of traffic “burstiness” (Fig. 1). It can be summed up as follows:
• Data is much less predictable than voice traffic and much more bursty with massive traffic flows that can dwindle to nothing quickly (unlike the steady flow of voice).
• Service providers no longer have the luxury of predicting where and when they might see traffic growth.

Tony Tam is a senior product manager with ANDA Networks, where he is responsible for the company’s Ethernet access, aggregation, and transport product portfolio. He received a BS in computer science from Tamkang University and an MS in computer science from the University of Nebraska.

Mobile-broadband data traffic runs between the user and the server at the application’s location. At any given time, many users reside on the same cell tower for business or personal Internet-related applications.

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