WAN offers reliability, security, and flexibility for smart roads, writes Benoît Leridon, Transportation Segment Leader, Network Infrastructure, Nokia
IoT has improved and enabled automated, real-time awareness. However, that capability is being applied to a broader range of complex use cases that integrate advanced technologies. As a result, communications networks that bring together and transport crucial information from sensors, cameras, vehicles, and other Intelligent Transportation System applications must also become more sophisticated.
As a foundation for change, private, mission-critical Internet Protocol Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) wide-area networks (WANs) have been designed to meet today’s intensified demands. They offer high reliability, security, flexibility, and the ability to support massive data growth. And as dedicated multi-service networks, they can leverage a variety of transport mediums (from native fibre to radio) while their seamless IP/MPLS layer provides a platform for integrating all types of application traffic. In addition, these WANs are flexible enough to keep evolving to address the highly complex needs of smart roads and highways.
Here are a few technologies an advanced WAN supports, and their operational benefits.
Enhancing scale and simplicity
When sensors, cameras, and wireless access points become highly distributed throughout roadways or elsewhere, a network’s boundaries and reach may expand significantly. In this case, Segment Routing (SR) can enable massive increases in the number of nodes in an IP/MPLS network, while simplifying operations and increasing control. This upgrade offers a far more efficient approach to label management and distribution because SR uses existing routing protocols—like Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS)—to build paths, removing the need for dedicated signaling protocols. Overall, SRoMPLS brings simplicity, scale, reliability, and control, offering a smooth, beneficial evolution to multiservice IP/MPLS networks.
Boosting efficiency with OT Cloud networking
Smart road operators are deploying more operational technology (OT) applications in a Cloud environment within their on-premises data centres, also known as OT Cloud, which also accelerates the use of AI/ML to improve operating efficiency. Whenever these applications and corresponding outside sensors interact, the data centre becomes an integral part of the end-to-end mission-critical network infrastructure.
The IP/MPLS WAN transport network connects directly to the data centre —supporting mission-critical applications with secure, high-performance links, mainly leveraging the optical fibre infrastructure. Inside the data centre, the network fabric uses a leaf-and-spine architecture: leaf switches connect to servers, while spine switches handle high-speed aggregation for internal or external DC traffic. A gateway at the Edge manages interactions between the data centre fabric and the IP/MPLS WAN. With Ethernet VPN (EVPN) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) managing optimised traffic transport, this system ensures seamless communication between the data centre and WAN—making it easier to coordinate services and IP traffic across domains, from end points to servers.
By increasing agility, this implementation supports valuable smart road applications, such as incident detection using video, dynamic road signage, and faster emergency system activation.
Gearing up for AI
While AI offers valuable business operating benefits, primarily targeting preventive maintenance and improved traffic management, it also creates greater demand for networks, mainly in data centres. That’s why smart road operators and other businesses need to implement effective methods for ensuring resiliency and high network capacity, while preventing congestion and sustaining seamless connectivity for AI workloads, across their network path.
Updating network security
As businesses incorporate digital tools and automation into operations, the need to protect application data increases, because digitalisation also expands the ‘attack surface’ that makes data vulnerable. As a first protective measure, road operators and other businesses need to transform their WAN into a powerful defensive force, using currently available security tools. Multi-Service MPLS WANs can address these challenges with segmentation (AKA zoning), which helps isolate and control application access—while additional measures promote a zero-trust approach, including Network Access Control, advanced filtering, and bandwidth restrictions to reduce the risks of attacks, and minimise their impact.
As cyber threats evolve, so must defence. One forward-looking effort now underway is quantum-safe encryption, designed to protect critical communications from future attacks that can break today’s widely used encryption algorithms. Its goal is to defend against threats like man-in-the-middle (MITM) and harvest now, decrypt later (HDML) attacks, which could compromise data in transit. This ability could be crucial in building long-term resilience — especially for critical systems like Intelligent Transportation, where secure and uninterrupted communications are essential to public safety.
Today’s best method of network security uses a defence-in-depth approach. It’s necessary to ensure security across the full infrastructure, spanning data centers and operation centers, as well as roadside equipment.
Charting the path forward
With rapid advancements in IoT and digital technologies, now is the moment to reassess the network foundations that organisations rely on. Evolving both the private WAN and private on-premises data centre infrastructure will be critical to fully supporting new IoT capabilities—and unlocking the performance, scalability, and security needed to drive smart and safe transportation forward.
Benoît Leridon is the Head of Transportation Business for Network Infrastructure at Nokia where he is responsible for global business development targeting transportation verticals. Benoit has 25 years of telecom pre-sales background covering enterprise and carrier markets for data, and voice solutions, and joined Alcatel-Lucent in 2010 after holding different pre-sales management positions in companies such as Wellfleet, Bay Networks and Nortel.
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