Will network technology outpace its human operators?

As network equipment increasingly blends and integrates technologies once relegated to wholly different spheres of expertise, it creates challenges for the human beings, with finite technical knowledge, operating the gear.

Routers are being fitted with optical components. Wide area networks are being permeated with Ethernet – often in the same box with legacy and optical traffic. Switches are taking on storage and computing functions. And carrier central offices are increasingly resembling data centers.

"You have to sort of re-do the job functions to take full advantage of this kind of equipment," said Michael Kennedy, managing partner and cofounder of Network Strategy Partners, referring to the convergence of switching, routing and optical technologies. "To plan for and select and buy these systems, you're being forced across all kinds of multi-disciplinary lines because so many functions are built into every device."

As telecom networks continue to mix once-disparate fields of technology, telecom professionals will have to go back to school – repeatedly, said Duncan MacFarlane, professor of electrical engineering (EE) at the University of Texas at Dallas's school of engineering and computer science. "The days of getting your master's degree at 25 and going to work over your entire career -- that's a rarity," he said. "[Telecom workers] will have to go back and not just put a lick and a promise on their skill sets but actually go back and get a serious degree with some periodicity."

"Our students are used to getting a degree a decade," he said. "They'll get a double-E degree, go to work at a Verizon, come back to us for a master's in double-E, then come back for a master's in software or telecom or computer engineering. We try to offer easy on-ramp degrees so that if you have an engineering background in any of those disciplines, you can advance your knowledge. "

But in some ways, the rapid evolution of technology may be even outpacing workers' ability to plan their own long-term education. For example, MacFarlane said, only five years ago, the advancement of 100-Gb/s systems seemed laughably distant. But Verizon has been testing them since 2007 and Ciena recently deployed one for a single customer. "That suggests, at the hardware level, a board-design skill set that's much more RF-microwave-oriented than we ever thought would play out this early -- really advanced analog mixed signal designs," he said. "You'll see a lot more ceramic, for example."

In addition to requiring greater knowledge of electromagnetics, the 100-Gb/s trend – driven simply by runaway traffic growth -- could also shift demand for skill sets from field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) back to ASICs, which dominated the industry a decade ago. "I don't think FPGAs will be able to keep up with 100-Gb/s clock rates," MacFarlane said.