Emerging AI techniques for network management

The next generation of telecommunications networks-the giant gigabit networks-will require the present management systems to undergo some radical changes. In these networks, the link speeds will move up to gigabits per second and traffic control will become extremely difficult. Moreover, these networks will contain a very large number of physical and logical elements, all these elements will need to be managed and this may rapidly lead to an information explosion. As a consequence, many traditional control and management techniques will no longer be appropriate. Other approaches such as artificial intelligence (AI) have to be considered. This paper concentrates on this issue and highlights the necessity for the use of AI in the management of broadband networks.