While at the NGMN Industry Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, the folks from Telecom TV interviewed Paul Polakos, Cisco Fellow. Paul is our CTO office lead for 5G research. During this interview, Paul talks about Cisco's active work driving towards 5G technology. Cisco is active in both Research and Development and the various standards organizations that are focusing on 5G development (like 3GPP, NGMN, etc.). Cisco is also working with our customers to align strategies.

Mr. Polakos stresses that 5G is about diversity of uses cases and devices unlike what we have seen in all the previous generations (i.e. 3G, 4G).

Cisco is very interested in Information Centric Networking (ICN) as a possible solutionto many of the demanding use cases that 5G is trying to address. ICN routes differently than traditional Internet Protocol (IP). ICN uses names to connect devices to desired content rather than end device to end device (as with IP). Additionally, ICN uses symmetric routing and implicitly supports mobility. The ICN routing requires all content to have the originators signature which assures secured content. Finally, ICN can help address one of the most talked about goals of 5G which is ultra-low latency. ICN can place both information and decision-making closer to the edges which can dramatically impacts latency.

Please take a moment to watch and listen to Paul Polakos, Cisco Fellow:

Information centric networking (ICN) enables mobility, security and storage as fundamental networks elements, in contrast to today's overlay approach. With the low latency requirements of 5G, ICN will naturally push and store information out towards the network edge, where these low latencies can be achieved.

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