Network Modernization at Orange

Jean Louis, it’s so great to be here with you on the MWC show floor. So we’re here at the DriveNets booth. We just had a panel and I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about some of the stuff you mentioned. So what is the main challenge in your network today?

Yeah, so basically our customer requirements are evolving very fast. The traffic is doubling every three years and customers are moving their application to the cloud. They are moving from MPLS to Internet. They also need for very strong SLAs for IoT, for instance, and sometimes they need for bursty traffic, in particular for GenAI. So at the end of the day, they need for programmable networks. So we need to move from a rigid network to a flexible network and to propose network as a service.

So talk to me a little bit about strategy. How are you addressing these problems?

So in order to move from these rigid networks to this flexible network, we have a simple strategy with five pillars. The first one, we invest in our infrastructure in order to absorb the traffic increase. Then we are ‘softerizing’ the IP layer with disaggregation and with segment routing. And we are decoupling the underlay and the overlay thanks to a telco cloud architecture. And on top of this telco cloud, we are virtualizing our network services such as SD wan, such as voice or mobile services. So we move the network from a rigid box to a Lego box. And to play with those Lego pieces, we have the orchestration layer that is going to instantiate the Lego pieces and set up end to end services for our customers.

So I hear you talking about an orchestration layer and also about playing with Lego. Where does DriveNets fit into this plan?

So DriveNets clearly fits at our IP layer. We are ‘softerizing’ the IP layer and it comes with disaggregation. And by the way, two years ago we disaggregated the access of the network and now we think about disaggregating the core. This is why we did this experimentation with DriveNet that was successful.

Talk to me a little bit more about the work you did with DriveNets. So what was your key takeaway from the proof of concept that you did with them?

So we did first, we did a lot of testing and we were quite happy. It was quite easy to understand the product, our engineers and to learn how to configure the product. Then we did some interworking. Basically we were using the basic routing protocols such as ISIS, BGP, LDP, etc. So we did some interworking. And the interworking with other suppliers went very well. So then we deployed in our live network and it was working very well. And it took only 45 days between the start of the project and the deployment, which is quite a record for us.

That sounds pretty fast for a proof of concept. So we’ve talked about trends, we’ve talked about the proof of concept you’ve done. What’s next?

Yeah, what’s next? So we are still experimenting on DriveNets. We are currently doing sustainability, some tests on the cluster mode, how to combine several pieces in parallel. We are doing a study to compare several clustering models and we are launching an RFP in order to generalize the evolution of our core backbone.

Excellent. Thank you so much for your time.

You are welcome.

Starting with Orange, I’m giving you the floor. Give us a little bit of the background, why you’re here and what you guys are doing.

Thank you. Thank you, Inbar. And hello everyone. I’m very pleased to be here with you today and with this great panel. So, yes, I am the head of the international network for Orange and I will briefly introduce our activity. I will take the mouse. What are we doing? So first we are managing infrastructure. We are managing 500,000km of cables, submarine and terrestrial cables. And on top of this next slide, we are managing a tier one Internet backbone. We have about 250 points of presence in 100 countries and we have also 50 telco clouds to manage the telco services. And if we move to the next slide, so we are a wholesale and B2B business. So we have roughly 1,800 customers, mainly operators, hyperscalers and multinational companies such as banks, factory and shops. And indirectly, we are serving 2 billion end users. We provide layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3 connectivity, SD WAN, CDN services as well as voice and mobile services. So if we move to the next slide, how do we see the market evolving? Quite basically we see our customers moving their application towards the cloud. We see our customers moving from dedicated MPLs towards SD WAN. Considering that the Internet is good enough, we see a huge traffic increase in our network. The traffic is doubling every three years. This is mainly driven by 5G. We see more and more requirements for very strong SLAs with IoT. And we see as well with GenAI, there is a need, of course, for training and for optimization. We see the need for what I call bursty traffic. We have some customers that request for instance a 100 gig or a 400 gig only for a short amount of time. And so at the end of the day, our customers are looking for very high speed connectivity in a flexible way. They need some programmable connectivity. So having said that, if we look at our network, it used to take months to upgrade the network to set up a new connectivity. While in the cloud it takes only, as you know, a few minutes to add a cloud instance. So what we have to do is very simple. We have to move from months to minutes to update our network. And this is what we call network as a service. The ability to provide on demand connectivity in a pay as you grow model. In order to do so, we have been launching a network transformation that is quite simple with five main pillars. The first pillar, we are still investing massively in the infrastructure. We are investing in order to support 30% traffic increase every year. On top of this, on the IP layer, we are currently softwarizing this IP layer. And the softerization of the IP layer relies on two main building blocks. First, the disaggregation and I will come back a bit later. And second, the segment routing. Why segment routing? Because it allows you to slice the network and to provide differentiated SLAs depending on your requirements. Then we have been introducing the Telco cloud layer that allows for a decoupling between the underlay and and the overlay. And on top of this telco cloud layer, we are virtualizing all what can be virtualized. We have been virtualizing SD WAN, CDN, we are virtualizing our voice services and we are virtualizing as well our mobile services. So in a nutshell, we are transforming the network from a rigid box to a kind of Lego box. And then we need to play with the Lego. And in order to play with the LEGO pieces, we have this orchestration layer on the left hand side that allows to combine Lego pieces and set up end to end service for our customers in a zero touch operation way. Relying on automation and artificial intelligence when it makes sense. And last slide before to move the floor. If we move. So now if we deep dive on the disaggregation of our IP MPLS network. This is a journey we started three years ago. We started in 2023 disaggregating the access of the network. It was an easy the layer two switching really at the access of the network. We started by this part because it was easy and removed to learn step by step. So we did this relying on the Sonic Open Source network operating system with our own developers to support this. And so we are the first box in 2023. And now end of 2024 we have more than 200 points of presence relying on those disaggregated access switches. As we are happy with disaggregation, we decided to move forward to the core of the network. Disaggregating the core. This is why we decided to launch an experimentation with DriveNets. We did a live experiment in the core and the results are very, very promising. What we are expecting from the desegregation this is mainly four benefits. The first one is to gain some flexibility, elasticity, ability to upgrade easily with fine granularity, the hardware ability to easily upgrade the software independently. The second benefit this is we are looking to reduce our cost to gain competitiveness. And here when you separate the hardware and the software, it’s really easier to optimize your cost. The third pillar this is, we wanted to simplify, really our operation, simplifying the ability to upgrade, to add some capacity without reinventing our design. And we can do this thanks to disaggregation. And last but not least, we are looking at our carbon footprint. And thanks to disaggregation, you can really fine tune adapt your hardware exactly to your needs, so you can really save some carbon. You can also better manage the obsolescence of your equipment. So this is very promising.

Okay, thank you, thank you.