Network planning and design is an iterative process, encompassing
topological design, network-synthesis, and network-realization, and is aimed at ensuring that a new telecommunications network or service meets the needs of the subscriber and operator.
The process can be tailored according to each new network or service.
A network planning methodology
A traditional network planning methodology in the context of business decisions involves five layers of planning, namely:
- need assessment and resource assessment
- short-term network planning
- IT resource
- long-term and medium-term network planning
- operations and maintenance.
Data-driven network design
More recently, with the increasing role of Artificial Intelligence technologies in engineering, the idea of using data to create data-driven models of existing networks has been proposed. By analyzing large network data, also the less desired behaviors that may occur in real-world networks can be understood, worked around, and avoided in future designs.
Both the design and management of networked systems can be improved by data-driven paradigm. Data-driven models can also be used at various phases of service and network management life cycle such as service instantiation, service provision, optimization, monitoring, and diagnostic.
See also
- Core-and-pod
- Network Partition for Optimization
- Optimal network design - an optimization problem of constructing a network which minimizes the total travel cost.