Rostelecom executive warns of backbone network capacity shortage

Overloaded backbone networks could hamper Russian companies' shift to distributed digital infrastructure, Rostelecom deputy management board chairman Valery Yermakov said at the RBC Tech forum on October 14.

Yermakov said companies were revising their threat models and seeking to spread services across more geographically separated sites. Infrastructure also needed redundancy so that services could be recovered after disruptions.

The previous model concentrated key services at a few locations, he said. That offered economies of scale and simpler management, but he argued that centralisation now increased companies' vulnerability.

Moving to distributed architecture requires data centres to be connected through links with sufficient bandwidth. Yermakov said Russian backbone networks were already heavily loaded.

He also pointed to the age of optical infrastructure, estimating that most existing lines had been built 20–30 years ago. He expects a shortage of backbone resources for connecting distributed sites in the near future.