Predicting the long run is tough.
As an analyst, that’s precisely what folks hope I can do. In fact, nobody can predict the long run, however we are able to mannequin numerous outcomes given one of the best information we’ve available.
So utilizing the information, let’s make a prediction about the long run affect of AI on enterprise networks.
There are numerous methods to strategy this, however the important thing space I’ll handle on this weblog collection is the affect of AI on enterprise community configurations. The 2 key areas the place our information are helpful for this are predicting the budgetary affect of:
- AI-driven bandwidth demand will increase.
- The continuing transfer away from office-to-office connectivity to connecting customers to property within the cloud.
I’m not going to deal with how automation will change community administration itself, however relatively how these above adjustments affect the entire value of possession (TCOs) of ensuing WAN configurations.
Deep studying and LLMs require giant transfers of knowledge for coaching and inference. Palo Alto lately launched a report that they noticed an 890% enhance in bandwidth demand final yr. That’s huge! In fact that’s largely between information facilities, however the implications for any department workplace or website are nonetheless clear. Nokia predicts that AI-specific visitors will develop at a CAGR of 24% a yr by 2033. A lot of the work of AI is going on within the cloud, making conventional MPLS architectures with centralized breakouts inefficient and gradual. To not point out costly.
Whereas we are able to’t predict a lot concerning the affect of AI on particular traces of enterprise, we can actually have a look at how giant will increase in bandwidth demand and cloud-centric hybrid architectures affect community prices. This weblog collection will handle modeling a number of doable AI-age community configurations and the way they may affect budgets. I do that on a regular basis for patrons of our WAN Price Benchmark platform, which is the instrument we’re utilizing to do that modeling.
Modeling Community Configurations
Now we have been operating numerous hypothetical situations since 2019, however in 2025, we would have liked a serious revision to maintain tempo with these new AI-driven configurations. This evaluation will have a look at an ordinary and high-capacity MPLS community and examine that to:
- a Conservative Tiered Websites WAN,
- an ordinary Tiered Websites WAN,
- a pared-down Distant Employee Hybrid WAN,
- an Web-First WAN,
- and probably the most radical revision, a Hub and Spoke WAN.
Apart from the Distant Hybrid WAN, the entire hypothetical community situations have the identical bodily geography throughout 150 international websites. Our intention once we created this unique hypothetical community in 2019 was to seize a smaller enterprise/multinational community (and to maintain the comparability work simpler for our analysts!) and to guarantee that it captures developments in key markets everywhere in the world. Our community consists of seven information facilities among the many 150 websites in key regional information middle hub cities:
- Tokyo
- Hong Kong
- Frankfurt
- London
- Ashburn
- San Jose
- São Paulo
We don’t specify a vertical for this hypothetical enterprise; nevertheless, it’s seemingly closest to a enterprise providers firm (suppose consulting, accounting, legislation agency) as most websites are in a key metro’s downtown or suburbs. This doesn’t symbolize an trade with rural or distant websites which have very lengthy entry traces; most of our entry traces are within the 0-5 km and 6-15 km ranges. Whereas our websites fall largely within the U.S. & Canada and Western Europe, the community spreads throughout the globe.
Share of Websites in Every Subregion–All WAN Situations
Word: Every part represents the entire contribution of the listed area to the worldwide WAN dimension.
Hypothetical Community Map
Twin MPLS WAN
Our baseline or management Twin MPLS community is supposed to symbolize what enterprises are forsaking: an all-MPLS community with active-active twin ports and totally redundant entry traces. The geographic distribution of the common bandwidth obtainable at every website featured beneath displays the entire bandwidth availability of the community and the way websites are distributed inside every area. We’ll use this chart to check adjustments to the community configurations and the way they affect obtainable bandwidth. This chart represents the entire bandwidth of all underlay merchandise at every particular person website, averaged throughout the complete subregion. For the beginning community that’s merely twice the MPLS port we chosen as it’s an active-active MPLS community.
Common Complete Bandwidth per Website in Every Subregion—Twin MPLS WAN
Word: Every bar represents the common whole website bandwidth, together with a number of ports or underlay providers, throughout all websites within the listed subregion.
- East Asia has the very best bandwidth, with a median of two,868 Mbps, as a result of it has two information facilities (DCs) and comparatively fewer websites than Western Europe or the U.S., which additionally has two DCs.
- Equally, the common in Latin America is introduced as much as a median bandwidth of 907 Mbps by the Brazilian DC.
- Different areas present a lot smaller common bandwidths, particularly these which can be costly. Within the community design, we stored value in thoughts to replicate the truth that bandwidth could also be restricted in high-cost areas.
The common bandwidth per website globally is 1,298 Mbps; nevertheless, that is introduced up considerably by the big capacities on the information facilities and some giant headquarters or campuses. Typical websites are a lot decrease, within the 10-200 Mbps vary.
Distribution of Complete Website Speeds—Twin MPLS WAN
Word: Every part represents the proportion of whole website bandwidths that fall inside every bandwidth vary.
- Because the WAN has active-active MPLS ports, the entire website pace is definitely twice that of the one port, which is the quantity we concentrate on to find out the obtainable bandwidth at any given website or throughout the community.
- Solely about one-quarter of websites have a complete bandwidth of 100 Mbps or much less.
- About 15 websites, or 11%, are above GigE. These symbolize the seven information facilities and some giant regional hubs.
Excessive Capability Twin MPLS WAN
Our beginning management community would show strained below AI-drive bandwidth calls for, so we added an extra management community. Within the MPLS surroundings, many enterprises would renew on a three- and even five-year foundation and maybe solely then handle rising bandwidth necessities. This extra management is in place to show the state of affairs the place maybe a WAN supervisor in 2025 was renewing a community that they had bought in 2022 and now wanted to spice up bandwidth by no less than 50% throughout the board. If this enterprise was not but capable of undertake SD-WAN/SASE and nonetheless wanted MPLS at each website, we needed to see the price affect of a bigger MPLS community.
Common Complete Bandwidth per Website in Every Subregion—Twin MPLS WAN vs. Excessive Capability Twin MPLS WAN
Word: Every bar represents the common whole website bandwidth, together with a number of ports or underlay providers, throughout all websites within the listed subregion.
- The common bandwidth per website comes out to 2,133 Mbps, which is a 64% enhance over the unique MPLS community.
Distribution of Complete Website Speeds—Excessive Capability Twin MPLS WAN
Word: Every part represents the proportion of whole website bandwidths that fall inside every bandwidth vary.
- We now not have any bandwidths within the 11-20 Mbps vary.
- The smallest bandwidth vary, 21-50 Mbps, has dropped from about 13% to three% of the worldwide WAN.
- The share of websites falling within the bandwidth vary 501-1,000 Mbps has decreased by about 1%, now accounting for 13% of websites.
- Round 25% of the websites now have a bandwidth bigger than GigE.
So, how do these bigger bandwidths affect value? Nicely, the price per bit goes down with larger capacities, so whereas we count on prices to go up considerably, we didn’t count on prices to go up by as a lot because the bandwidth enhance.
Unique Twin MPLS and Excessive-Capability Twin MPLS Situation TCOs
Word: Every column represents the entire annual value of possession for that WAN state of affairs, damaged out by product in every shade part.
- Whereas the common bandwidth obtainable per workplace went up by 64%, the TCO solely rose by 43%, going from $8.1m to $11.6m.
- Whereas the unit value benefit is evident, this may nonetheless symbolize a drastic change in price range for the community to accommodate the rising bandwidth calls for of the fashionable enterprise.
Whereas nobody would wish to enhance their community price range by 43%, that isn’t the top of the story. An all-MPLS structure is inefficient for internet-driven cloud visitors, and previous class of service know-how can not benefit from utility particular coverage and efficiency administration when enterprises undertake SD-WAN.
Within the subsequent posts we’re going to have a look at numerous hybrid situations that benefit from SD-WAN, native breakouts for higher cloud connectivity, and elevated bandwidth.
