In today’s IP networks, complexity translates quickly into direct cost as well as operational risk. The relentless, sustained growth in the number of network-connected endpoints and application/service traffic loads has stressed networks and raised the attention paid to monitoring and planning. Fault-tolerant architectures are in place to assure continuous network services, but to date this has required substantial over-provisioning, and the administrative load for configuration and maintenance has been high. The current move towards simpler, flatter networks in core, distribution, and access layers of the network offers hope for a better, lower cost, lower risk future. HP has introduced their Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) as an answer to the need to reduce complexity and cost.

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