NBN Co has implemented \u201cfacets\u201d of an architectural blueprint developed by Cisco that, in part, is intended to help operators scale and monetise their networks for AI-related traffic.<\/p>\n
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\n NBN Co’s Asif Khan and Cisco’s Guru Shenoy.
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Executive manager of fixed wireless strategy and architecture Asif Khan told Cisco Live in Melbourne that the national network operator \u201cstarted with a very simple mandate\u201d back in 2009 that has evolved into playing \u201ca much bigger role\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the digital backbone for the country,\u201d he said, adding there is a pressing need to \u201cmonetise our investment and lock into the path of AI\u201d.<\/p>\n
NBN Co\u2019s planning around AI traffic appears to have been influenced in part by its experiences with Netflix a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started, we thought that having a fibre network was going to give us oodles of bandwidth for the next, let’s say, 10 years, but [that] myth was burst by Netflix in 2015,\u201d Khan said, adding that the streaming era led to \u201cexponential growth\u201d in traffic volumes, \u201cwhich we never anticipated.”<\/p>\n
The company made a belated attempt to find a way to finance the unanticipated traffic increase driven by Netflix,<\/a>\u00a0but ultimately abandoned the idea of treating streaming traffic differently from regular traffic after a consultation in 2019.<\/p>\n Still, the saga appears to have changed the company\u2019s approach to future capacity planning\u00a0\u2013 and NBN Co, like carriers globally, is principally concerned with how increasing AI workloads will change the profile of traffic running across its network.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, there’s a lot of talk about AI, and mainly it’s in the data centres where a lot of GPU-based modelling is happening,\u201d Khan said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really haven’t seen a lot of traffic transfer into the network, but I think [those] days are not far away. It’s a matter of time.\u201d<\/p>\n In preparation, NBN Co wants to be able to\u00a0distinguish between AI and non-AI traffic. It could then offer assurance for the AI traffic, which could cost extra.<\/p>\n This is along the lines of what NBN Co wanted<\/a>\u00a0but was unable to do with streaming traffic.<\/p>\n A blueprint for assurance and monetisation<\/p>\n On this, the company has some capability to \u201cmake autonomous network decisions\u201d in the transport layer \u201cby looking into two parameters: bandwidth [and] time sensitivity.\u201d<\/p>\n This is possible because, at least for the “fixed wireless component of the National Broadband Network\u201d, Cisco NC540 and NC550 routers and a Cisco Crosswork network controller overlay is used in its architecture, allowing some degree of software-defined networking to be implemented.<\/p>\n But NBN Co is also, to some degree, taking advantage of a more specific solution to the AI traffic problem: in the form of Cisco’s \u2018agile services networking architecture<\/a>\u2019, which was released at an event in Amsterdam in early 2025.<\/p>\n According to the vendor, the architecture is intended to \u201cprovide the blueprint for service providers as they look to enable AI connectivity and monetise assured services.\u201d<\/p>\n On stage at Cisco Live last week, the vendor\u2019s senior vice president, product management, provider connectivity Guru Shenoy, disclosed that NBN Co has adopted the blueprint.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing I didn’t really get a chance to talk about is the ability to \u2026 have telemetry to be able to identify how much AI versus non-AI traffic is traversing through the network, [to] be able to do assurance around that and so forth,\u201d Shenoy said, speaking to Khan.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s also part of our agile services networking architecture blueprint that we put out. And I know we’ve partnered together on this particular architecture. You’ve implemented facets of that architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s an interesting space to keep a close eye on that,\u201d Khan responded.<\/p>\n Approaching self-healing\u00a0<\/p>\n