Huawei unveils Application Driven Network architecture concept

Chinese networking giant Huawei has revealed its plans for a new network architecture concept it’s calling Application Driven Network (ADN).

Huawei is claiming to be the first to propose networks should put applications first, as opposed to focusing on network resource use and network operations optimization. This is all tied in with existing concepts such as NFV and SDN, sharing with them the aim of making networks more agile and efficient.

“Our innovative ADN architecture vision puts applications at the network’s core to deliver significant application-efficiency gains for networks,” said Huawei Fellow, Dr. Wen Tong. Unlike traditional network architectures, ADNs will support application abstraction, network re-programmability, global and local coordination of network resources, and application decoupling by service layering. With these advantages, ADN is poised to meet a variety of future application demands, for example, in 5G networks.”

While Huawei is positioning this as the future of network architecture, no details were given about when we might expect to see it evolve from theory to practice. However it’s clearly being positioned as a 5G technology so Huawei will need to act quickly if it wants AND to be part of the 5G mix.

In other news Huawei also launched its ‘smart EasyRET 3.5GHz 8T8R Antenna’, which is designed to optimize 3.5GHz TDD propagation using 8T8R Beamforming technology. And the vendor announced the signing of an MOU with testing company Anite to access Huawei’s OSS interfaces under OSSii, so their testing for Huawei’s network infrastructure OSS equipment will be more accurate.