Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Information dominance has become key to battlefield success. The evolution from Network-Centric Warfare to Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) and JADC2 is all about connecting drones, sensors, weapon-systems and decision-makers, across land, air, sea, cyber, and space… in real time. Read about the journey, principles and building blocks, and how Ribbon Communications’ solutions are in the middle of it.

Whether it’s streaming video, powering remote work, or supporting smart technologies, the ability to connect local users to the global internet is essential. But behind the scenes, a key infrastructure layer ensures that this digital experience runs smoothly: the middle mile. Middle mile networks serve as the critical bridge between the internet’s backbone and the local networks that deliver service to homes, businesses, and institutions.

Carrier pigeons once flapped through war zones with vital messages. Today? Sensor fusion delivers battlefield intel faster than thought. The fight isn’t just about who has the data, it’s about who moves on it first. Speed wins wars now! Read how it’s changing the game, how deployable command and control (C2) nodes can help, and why network slicing is a key ingredient in building a resilient, high-speed transport network: Carrier Pigeons to Sensor Fusion: Speed Matters in Information.

Data centers have become the beating heart of digital business. Everything from financial transactions to cloud-based collaboration tools depends on the seamless movement of information between these high-powered facilities. As demand for bandwidth grows and companies stretch their networks across cities, states, and continents, the ability to connect data centers securely and efficiently has taken on new urgency. But linking data centers isn’t as simple as laying fiber between buildings.

Rural America is experiencing a dramatic surge in network demand driven by high-bandwidth applications like 4K video streaming, real-time sports content, and AI workloads. As broadband competition and digital transformation accelerate, service providers must rethink middle-mile network architecture to be scalable, technology-agnostic, and service-aware.

For today's leading service providers and large enterprises, ensuring peak performance requires navigating a labyrinth of data streams, monitoring tools, and legacy systems. This often leaves network operators spending more time searching for information than acting on it. A new AI-enabled network management is dawning, promising to upend these cumbersome workflows.

Several years ago, while surfing the web, the author of these lines discovered something unexpected… an organization with focus on optical networks he had not heard of before.

In a recent presentation, Verizon’s Steve Ownes discussed their strategic initiative to accelerate the decomissioning (decom) of TDM switches, underlining the significance of repurposing legacy infrastructures in favor of modern architectures. Ribbon’s guest Steve Owens kicks things off with a light-hearted reference to "Sanford and Son” showing how relics can be transformed into gold through effective management and innovation.

As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly evolves from a research novelty to an enterprise essential, one often-overlooked component is under intense pressure: the network. AI’s hunger for data and real-time performance is forcing enterprises, cloud providers, and data center operators to rethink how they interconnect data centers. Enter Managed Optical Fiber Networks (MOFN) — a modern solution for modern DCI challenges.