hey everyone welcome back to today in tech I'm Juliet Beauchamp and I am here
with Jack Gold, the principal analyst and president of Jack Gold Associates and
today we are talking about network slicing so Jack take it away -- what
exactly is network slicing thanks Julian look network slicing is something that I
think a lot of people don't understand and it's it's gonna be a critical
capability or 5g going forward there's some of it available in 4G today but
mostly it's going to be critically available a critical capability and 5g
and here's why imagine a network the full bandwidth of the network that's
available and you've got thousands of users trying to access that bandwidth
not all users need the full bandwidth if I'm streaming a 4k video gaming system
then yeah I need tons of tons and tons of bandwidth if I'm sending a text all I
need is a few kilobytes it that's the whole maybe not even that much that's
the whole thing maybe it's just a few bytes and so the the problem is that the
network operators want to make sure that they give everyone the best possible
experience they can on their networks and the way you do that is not to give
people that are texting the full network bandwidth for however long it takes to
text because that will take I don't know three seconds out of somebody's gaming
experience and there'll be a glitch rather what they're going to do is
they're gonna take the full bandwidth of the network and and cut it into slices
so if I have a text that I need to send and that text adjust a few kilobytes
best then I'm going to give you a few kilobytes worth of data capability on
that network let's say use an example making this up let's say the bandwidth
available is is 100 megabytes it'll probably be more than that but 100 is a
nice round number so if you're a gamer I may give you 75 80 85
megabits of that data bandwidth and if you're a texter I may give you 75 or 80
kilobits of that data now I can satisfy you and the gamer and I can satisfy a
whole bunch more textures and then if you're doing something that is web
searching I can satisfy a bunch of people there because I can slice the
network for the needs that they have and what this means the carrier's is two
things what I can give you a better experience but two I can also
potentially charge a premium price if you're a gamer and you want all that
bandwidth and you're cutting other people out then I'm going to charge you
more than if you're a texter or let's say you're an IOT device you're a meter
this is a great example actually where this is real where you're talking about
bytes of data maybe once a week or once a month I'm gonna slice the the network
capability for you so that I can charge you maybe it's a dollar a month maybe
it's less because I don't have to charge you for a full you know 50 70 $80 a
phone charge to get that meter data out there because there's such such small
data so so network slicing works because it gives everyone kind of equal access
to the network based on their needs now the only way this works by the way and
here's why it hasn't been a big deal hasn't been used in the past very much
the earlier it works is with a new network course the core is the
technology that makes the network work behind the scenes behind the radio
towers and in the past that's all been kind of dedicated equipment here's a
switch here's a router here's a radio here's whatever it is we're moving now
to something that's called nfe network function virtualization which basically
uses standard computers with a few accessories tied onto their you know USB
ports they're faster than USB ports perhaps and you can program them to do
whatever you need to do so I can then program the core of the network to give
giulia 80% of the bandwidth in Jack 8% of the bandwidth because that's all
they're using right now and I kinda just accordingly as needed so that's really
why slicing is so important and it's going to be a big deal for 5g it's going
to be a big deal for users as well from a performance and
security perspective great well thank you so much jack for letting it son this
is really insightful information really appreciate it
my pleasure thank you and thank you all so much for watching this episode of
today in tech if you liked this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and
subscribe to our channel if you have any questions about network slicing be sure
to leave a comment below I'll get back to you or get back to you on Jack's
behalf thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time